Be Excellent To Each Other

Or maybe 'You can build whatever the hell you want, but you can only replace the parts a certain number of times'.

Let them do anything they want, so long as that isn't weapons, still has wheels touching the ground and connects them to the car via fixed lengths, rubber bushes and joints and doesn't cost more than £50m a year.

If the ideal is for it to only be about the cars with any semi-competent bum able to win provided he has the best car then why not do away with them altogether and see who can build the fastest robot car. It would have just the same widespread appeal as Robot Wars and the namby-pambys wouldn't need to get upset about watching drivers get killed each week.

Difficult to say - they both had similar results in the feeder series (Webber in F3 and Glock in GP2). I guess you wouldn't know until you put them in the same car.

If they had the same chassis/engine you wouldn't have the success stories of Team Lotus/Caterham building a team from scratch and improving each year, now getting even more funding from Bernie. Or even of Red Bull themselves who have only been in the sport seven years. When they took over the ailing Jaguar team they were firmly entrenched in the midfield. Now they've surpassed the old established teams and set a new benchmark.

There are many single chassis/engine formulae to choose from - maybe F1 just isn't for you?

I think that all I can conclude from all this is that you are never going to get a set of F1 rules which make everyone happy. The best you can hope for is that you keep people watching. Some of us think it should be more about the drivers, some the cars but along with lots of other people we all still seem to watch it, apart from Mr Dave.

Really tricky to enforce that, though.

I like the "If another team offers you £3 million for your car then you have to accept" approach

And randomise the teams/drivers for "super special" races.

I like that idea. Every team has a fixed budget for the year, from that they have to do everything, from hiring drivers and engineers, to building the cars and travelling to races.

Do you spend the cash on a better driver and sacrifice car development, or vice versa etc...

Haven't quite a number of the teams said "If you do that we'll fuck off and set up our own discipline", though?

I like the robot cars idea the best.

If I recall correctly, it has been mooted many times, however, I think that's unlikely to happen. The F1 circus must sort out most of the problems for the teams to "go to racetrack, race, come home" and gives them a pretty packet at the end of the day. A1 GP didn't work too well, despite the standardisation of cars and stuffs, either. Personally, I'd like a tight rulebook for F1, and one that rewards innovation rather than then race three hissy fits teams seem to have when car A is doing well because of modification X and then turn up in race 4 with their interpretation of it.

I'm not sure of the rules of F1, but a 3 litre engine should be a decent starting point, let the teams decide which configuration to use. give them a cardboard box and say "Your front wing must fit in this, as we're posting them in it to each track" and another for the back. The middle bit of the car they can do what they want with. And they must have mounting points for cameras, too. As that's ace. having sat in an F1 car (Honda Earthdreams), it's like a canoe with wheels, and I would rather be in Grim..'s Tomcat doing 180mph than one of those, especially as if you turn the wheel, your can't see in front of you as your fist is in the way, so they should think about that. The rules about team orders as they are should be scrapped, and offer drivers more money for not following them. The FIA could surely outspend an F1 team. And all used tyres at the end of a race weekend should be worn out by sticking them onto identical cars (maybe last years ones) and having an anonymous doughnut/drifting competition to be decided by who gets the biggest cheer from the crowd. it'd be better than the press conference.

The tracks need looking at too. get shot of the newer ones that are wank, and go for more elevation changes from slow corners or something. Hills are good, going up and down, as it upsets the sciences of things and introduces more variables.

was me about 4 years ago, I've not really got back into it either, despite Hamilton/Button being fairly competitive...

Malc

Now nervy about Sky having F1. As I'm paying full whack with the full sports package, I tend to fall into the camp of 'I'm paying Sky, so I'd rather it not come out of the licen.e fee'.

However, my Sky comes from Virgin. And the F1 is on a new channel. And Virgins record of getting new sky channels ain't great/

Poor Riles and his first world problems

Button to be in the no.3 car next season due to finishing ahead of Hamilton, but Schumacher to stay as no.7. Hmmm.

With Kimi Räikkönen returning to the fold, some very kind person has collated a bunch of his interviews.

For example:

They are also owned by a gazillionaire who managed to give Adrian Newey a far better offer than McLaren were prepared to and true to form after a couple of seasons his drivers are 'doing a Mansell'. Regardless of which team it is, if you get Newey in the form book says you'll be in the top three manufacturers within a couple of seasons as long as your drivers are championship-capable (and there's a ton of drivers in F1 right now who have it in them to do that in the right car, bloody loads of them).

Tracks are dull as fuck. I'd like to see more blind dips into adverse cambered corners for a start.

Also supertight bermed hairpins & rhythm sections. Keep it planted for control & acceleration or go big?

That's what everybody said about Ross Braun. Turns out that's not entirely true.

Yeah, he needs to shave a few tenths off the Mercedes' times next season.

Nice
I particularly enjoyed when there was that massively delayed race, and everyone was wondering if it would run or not so he fucked off and got changed and went for some ice cream instead (Note, I'm a casual follower of F1, so some details may be inaccurate). Before then, I'd always thought he was a bit boring.

It wasn't "delayed" as such, they were waiting to see if the rain would stop. Was it Silverstone in 2009? Or Malaysia, maybe.

Malaysia 2009, indeed.

USA and Bahrain are confirmed for the 2012 season.

Woo! Boo!

Sky F1 team confirmed:
http://www1.skysports.com/formula-1/new ... 12-F1-team

Brundle is a dirty whore who'll go with anyone, isn't he?

Like Murray Walker, you mean?

So he's left the BBC?

Ted Kravitz? Really?

Yeah, so has Kravitz.

Humphrey and McKenzie to stay with the Beeb. -edit- I'm wondering if the BBC will just buy the commentary feed from Sky. Better that than getting Legard back, especially now Croft has jumped ship as well.

Radio 5 commentary again then is it?

Apart from the fact Croft has left to join Sky.

He was on twitter saying it was nothing to do with the money.

Bull. Shit.

To be fair, he did say the one thing that swung it for him was the fact there would be no adverts during the races, but who really knows.

With them holding the rights for all races, Sky are going to be the de-facto broadcaster for the foreseeable future. BBC aren't going to get more coverage going forward, so Brundle has to be part of the established main team to stay in the sport, I wouldn't be surprised if they offered him a pay cut and he took it.

I think Murray Walker just came with the sport when ITV bought it, it wasn't a case of them giving him a contract or anything. Just turn up at the circuit and he's there in the commentary box.

Anyway, I've been reading up on the comings and goings with regard to sky, and looking at which races the BBC have live, and I feel like giving up completely. I hate watching sports unless they are live and I have a healthy dislike for most of the races the BBC have. I'm sure I shan't ignore it completely but part of the attraction for me has always been that all my coverage is right where I want it.

One thing mentioned elsewhere was that the driver's time is going to be better spent talking to Sky because that gives them an 'in' with a lot of the press here and internationally, plus a Murdoch-friendly driver will get much better coverage in the US. So much of the stuff we've seen from the Beeb with Button and that will be curtailed in the future - they'v only so much time to spend with the media and the BBC can offer them a lesser service than before, in a place where they can't get any more famous than they already are.

Still, it's an excuse to sit down the pub all afternoon on a Sunday, I suppose.

For a good few years when ITV took over (and BBC before it) the commentary team would be in the UK for the non-European races, commentating on the same feed as we were seeing.

That's the classic money saver, though - live sport is expensive. So much so that when ITV had the contract for athletics in the 80s, it was often slightly touch and go whether they'd just sack it off and stick on an old Bond film instead, rather than spend the £100,000/hr to show the sport.

Can't believe people are criticising Brundle - he (and Kravitz) are motorsports people, not generic commentators. Legard is a commentator, he does cricket, football and more. I think he was tennis on R5 before F1, though I may be confusing him with someone else.

Though what this clearly shows, above all else, is how the commercial television stations cannot possibly compete with the licence tax funded BBC. Er. Or something.

F1 Online beta registration launches.

It's bewildering really, given that at least half your F1 races, a good third at least of all football matches ever, lots of boxing, most snooker, 75% of tennis, 90% of golf and all athletics are a load of boring old shite anyway. Prices should be chargeable retrospectively based upon how crap the day's sport is. I don't know how much a Championship match costs the BBC to televise but if all they get for that money is 90 minutes of 22 men standing in the midfield hoofing the ball straight upwards they shouldn't be having to pay much at all.

The sad thing is, I can't even do a Sheffield Wednesday joke with this.

I agree with you, though. Although, that'd make most of F1 broadcast rights be worth about £3.

As a Caterham resident, I'm hoping that Caterham F1 will do awesomely, and that some of the glory will somehow rub off on me. I can't quite see the relation between CAterham Cars and F1 though - they do loads of racing but I don't think anyone links them to F1. It also appears to have led to the Caterham Car company attempting to boost their image in the town a bit - so far they've suggested running a Caterham branded soapbox derby down Church Hill, which will probably result in more deaths and injuries than a 1950's Indy 500.

Really frustrating not knowing if Virgin Media are going to get the F1 channel or not?

A clever joke, do we think?

Ploy by sky to delay so they can get users signed upto sky before confirming late that it will be on virgin & bt vision

I was referring to this (not that there's any reason for you to have read that. I reckon Myp just exploded).

Oops sorry

Thread necromancy hooooooo!

I don’t know anything about racing, but my good friend’s daughters has been signed to the Alpine F1 mentorship program. The racers are from all over the world and she is representing the U.K.

She’s the shortest one in these pictures.

Everyone is rightly so proud of her and I thought it’d be nice to share some positive news.