Just Trying To Keep Up With Eric

I never quite agreed with F1's tag as the pinnacle of motorsport, anyways. I don't care, either. To me, F1 was always the perfect mix of speed, challenging drives and distinctive drivers/teams. American motorsports may have the speed, but not the distinctive drivers/teams (too many teams, too many drivers...hard to become attached to any of them or for any of them to stand out because of their personality) WRC lacks the strategic scope (well, it has a strategic scope, just not as thrilling to me) and wacthing it on TV is just not the same. Yet, I think the best drivers are in WRC. Everytime they do one of those switchs where a F1 drivers gets a rally car and a rally driver gets an F1 car, the F1 drivers can barely maintain the car on track, while the WRC drivers get real close to F1 lap times.

Well I'll respond provocatively as ordered.    I think Russ' post was very interesting as always, like Andres above too.  Clearly F1 is defined by legal agreements but as to what makes it stand out and be unique, its USP so to speak, well it's harder to say.  I personally think it probably does still have the best drivers in the world.  Obviously many of them aren't but that's not a new thing either - there have been pay drivers as far back as I can remember anyway.  Certainly they are the best in terms of open-wheel, racing.  It's harder to compare it to more different forms of racing, but I still think in terms of competition for participation, dedication, fitness etc F1 is at least as good as any other form of racing.  Many drivers in other series aspire to be F1 drivers (eg Rossi himself) and many of them initially wanted to be F1 drivers, but couldn't get in or are now too old.  Michael's loss is a (short term) blow admittedly, especially because imho his replacement doesn't work very hard.

Likewise nowadays teams like Ferrari and McLaren have enormous technical ability, and the competition there is intense.  There is innovation, but it is in the details that we hardly ever see, so perhaps it doesn't count as a USP?  But nevertheless I still find it a somewhat interesting contest.  Regarding the other forms of motor racing, with the exception of MotoGP I don't find them very interesting tbh.  I think WRC is held back by the fact that they don't race each other directly, and the long distance events/rallies are OK as one-offs but not on a regular basis - regular sporting events shouldn't be 24 continuous hours long imho.  Touring cars, sports cars and NASCAR etc have more sensible formats for attracting viewers but fail on the driving talent and technical innovation sides above, but they also involve cars which just aren't as impressive imho (and this is supposed to be one of the attractions of NASCAR!).

Overall I think F1 is still the pinacle.  However I've already said many times here that it's hopelesly run (obviously!).  If you want to see more overt technical innovation, clearly you have to remove the restrictive regulations.  Personally I don't find this as interesting as the driver aspect of the sport, mainly because the technical innovation at NASA or CERN say is much more impressive, and you still have technical competition atm, it's just invisible to the naked eye.  So what I would advocate is that we scrap teams altogether, have a single car and let the drivers compete on a level playing field race track.  GP2 could have the same car, and would serve as a "2nd division" from which you could compete for "promotion".  This proposal would mean that we would have more overtaking, less predictable races, better comparisions between the drivers (what I really care about), no pay drivers, fewer safety concerns, no technical cheating, faster cars, more physically demanding cars...  The benefits would be endless.  I can't think of any costs except the loss of the (relatively modest, in the grand scheme of science) technical innovation/competition.

Excellent blog, Russ, and I agree with all of it. So how to respond? I suppose with a question.

If we accept that technical innovation wasn't part of the original warp and weave of F1 that made our sport the 'pinnacle', then what was? As you say, the drivers were. What made those Formula 1 drivers the best in the world? If we can nail that down, a solution to F1's current problems may be found...

Difficult cars and tracks.

Only the most skilled drivers in the world could hustle a late 60's Lotus around Spa. Once you've done that, going into other races (like rally, saloon cars, and the Indy 500) become an easy endeavor. Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill studied at the school of difficult cars under Headmaster Chapman. You want good drivers, you need fast, difficult to drive cars. Current aerodynamics make today's F1 car very easy to drive. Don't believe me? Look at Montoya. He won races in F1 and can't break into the top 10 in NASCAR. Justin Wilson, Robert Doornbos are both very fast F1 drivers but they are in ChampCar and they aren't dominating the field. They do well, but they aren't the 'best'. Go back to Montoya who was used to hustling a heavy, difficult to drive CART around a track. He went into an F1 car and was immediately on the pace. Taming a difficult car makes for a better driver.

Now that you've mastered a difficult car, you need a track to test your skills on. Jackie Stewart said that the old Nordschleife took a lifetime to master. Each one of the old, classic tracks was difficult to drive, even in the best car. By 'difficult' I don't mean 'technical'. When you say 'technical' these days, you are really saying 'it's got some very slow corners'. By 'difficult' I mean the old Eau Rouge with the cliff face on your left and an armco and thin air on your right. Nail that at speed and tell me you aren't the best around. Ditto the old Silverstone.

So there's your answer from me; Difficult cars and tracks. Bring back both of those things and we will see the best drivers race again in Formula 1.

Before Jaguar and Ferrari, and later on Ford (spelled L-o-l-a) and Porsche, we've got the Mercedes 35 and Simplex, the Peugeot Hemis, the Benz Tropfenwagen, the Alfa 8C and the awsome silver arrows.
All GP cars.
GP racing had the technology.


1923 Benz Tropfenwagen, mid engined streamlined




Silver arrows:

You miss the point again, DOF. This isn't to say there never was technology in F1, but that during the golden age (so to speak) of F1 (the 60's) the tech was lower than other series. In those days, F1 had the best drivers, but not the best tech. And it didn't matter in the least to the spectacle.

You don't need tech to create spectacle. Watch any clip from the 1965-67 season and then come back and argue that the tech makes the spectacle, knowing that those clips demonstrated a lower level of tech than some other series of the time.

Nice pics. But they don't really prove anything, DOF. Mike's post above says what you need to know.

What do you meant they don't prove anything ?!

Mid engined, streamline cars and witch used of the monocoque were all a reality in GP racing in 1923.

Before WWII the battle between Auto Union and MB reached a not before seen climax in GP racing.
Mid engined cars, V12/V16 sequentiall twin supercharged engines beaten in power only by the 1980 turbos and 1990s/2000s V10s.
And the importance given to aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing was not reached until the 1980s.

Those GP Silver Arrows were fastest, most expensive and most technologically advanced race cars in the world. And minus one or two exceptions, they destroyed anything standing in their way.

What happened after, was a dark-age, that F1 has not truly surpassed until the 1980s.

The place of GP racing as the worlds premium, unequalled series for the fastest, most expensive and most technologically advanced cars was lost for a while.

But before the dark age, GP Racing was there in inovation, speed, technology and expenses (sure it took decades to get back there).

But the Lola-Fords and Jaguars where were they ?!



Tell me Monza Gorilla, and autumnpuma, do you guys have any idea what happened before 1950 ?!


I can tell what. A little.

Voisin introduced the use of the monocoque in a GP car, while Dr. Porsche the mid-engined GP car, all this in 1923.
Later Dr. Porsche went to Auto Union, in the early 1930s, were he continued with the mid-engined formula, coupled with all out independent suspensions, and mighty engines. And he even experimented with hydraulic brakes. All this only by the 1930s.

Copper and Lotus simply RE-introduced these inovations.

Interesting that you ask this because I don't know alot about GP before the championship. I know of the few drivers that shined in that era, however, Williams, Nuvolari, Fangio. This proves the point, I think. Most people will be like me and only really rememeber the drivers. Not the tech. Most of us have an inkling of the great names and streamlined cars of the past: Bugatti; Alfa Romeo; Auto Union; but most focus on the drivers.

You can have a series that focuses on the tech to the detriment of the driver, of course, but you'll not generate the spectacle that makes the sport. You'll have empty grandstands and no viewers. If the sport ventures too far in this direction, many will stop watching. Fact of life, my friend, fact of life.

This all brings up an interesting question. Which series would be more popular?

1) Total technology with very little driver skill.

2) Small technology with very great driver skill.

If we take GP racing and put #1 at one end of the spectrum and #2 at the other end, and fashion rules to bring GP racing ever closer to #1, what would be the result? All but the die-hard techies out there would lose interest as the 'human' factor is diminished. Now push those rules through to bring GP closer, indeed right up to, #2 and what would be the result? You'd lose the small percentage of techies' interest, but the average 'Joe' would watch and enjoy. The idea being that you can never fail by erring on the side of driver skill, but you can do nothing but fail by erring on the side of tech.

In those golden days of GP racing in the 20's and 30's people, as now, looked to the drivers first and the tech second. A few came to watch the sleek cars run, but far more came to watch Nuvolari.

You're forgeting Rosenmeyer, Caracciola, Lang. And Fangio wasn't there, pre WWII

Rosenmeyer was considered sort of a Gilles Villeneuve of the 1930s.
He established a record on the AVUS in 1937 with hio streamlined C type.
380 Km/h = 237.5 mph on the straight line.
Or his battle to comeback at the 1937 German GP Nurburgring.




Here is a little about him

Quote

A picture of his streamliner of witch he achieved the fastest lap average in GP racing history:
V16 supercharged 525 hp, aerodynamic streamlined in wind tunnels, mid-engined, super expensive




At it's not even the most powerful. That title goes to the 1937 MB W125 witch had 575 hp.
By comparison, everything till the turbo cars of the 1980s were toys.

That's what Fangio and Clark drove. Rosenmeyer, Nuvolari, Lang, Caracciola drove marvelous monsters.

This picture could be called "Citius-Altius-Fortius", faster-higher-stronger. It represents the ultimate in pre-war motor racing, Rosemeyer at Avus 1937.

As you can see inovation, supreme performance, technology, high expenses were all there.

Unfortunately the dark age of wimpy cheapo cars followed, and only by the 1980s it was over.

Just check this links and than come back.

Excellent youtube posts! What struck me about the first one is how difficult that AutoUnion was to drive. The video says only ex-motorbike riders could drive the thing! The phenominal tech is one thing, and should be lauded, but without those drivers there knocking out the back end and driving that difficult car, you would have nothing. I'll wager most people looking at that video would be astounded at the level of tech, but would be even more astounded at the courage and skill of the drivers. So we again swing back to the drivers.

The tech is nice, but not needed.

I say the tech is needed, to take things further, to provide new challenges, to differentiate.

For me, F1 has got look always to those days, a question if it is worthy of the legacy.
In the 50/60/70s it clearly wasn't the case. The titans were simply not matched, and without them it was just another series.
But the struggle-progress to get out of the mud were it has landed after WWII and to go further to new heights is what made it special, or rather kept it special. That essential part of its spirit was there.

The drivers are nice, but terrific drivers and/or mad drivers are found everywere, well maybe not evrywere but ... F1/GP has to differentiated properly thru inovation, technology-engineering, performance and costs. And to those drivers, that master its creations, the titan F1/GP cars on the tracks, whatever rewards are deserved.  

But F1/GP racing can never be the drivers series/championship, even if the drivers are the finest in the world.
For F1/GP is also about the armies behind, the industry, the unsung heroes, the brilliant minds of inovators/inventors/pioneers, the technology-engineering, the belief-progress-struggle.
For should this disappear, the spirit dies.
And spirit of F1/GP racing is not the spirit of everything else.

Here is another thing next to those cars. This belong to the period in between the 1923 mid-engined streamlined Benz Tropfenwagen & Voisin monocoque car on one side and the titan Silver Arrows on the other.

It is the 1932 SSKL Streamliner witch won the AVUS race in that year.







von Koenig-Fachsenfeld was responsable for the aerodynamics. He was of trio, together with P. Jaray and W. Kamm, of the world best aerodynamicists of the time.

I wonder again, in between names like F. Porsche and von Koenig-Fachsenfeld, taking GP racing to new levels, where were the Le-Mans Lola-Fords and Jaguars ?!

Also another interesting.

Quote

Quote

The controversial lower and upper fairings that converted the
Auto Union into a ground effect car, 40 years before Lotus 78/79.



So now let's see, ground effects, downforce, mid-rear engine layout, body shaped in wind tunnels, powerful engines, top speeds of up to over 400 Km/h=250 mph on autobahn and 380 Km/h per track, high expenditures, up to 350 000 people per race (that's right up to 350 000 spectators per race, unmatched even today).


So again misters Monza Gorilla and autumnpuma, where exactly were the Lola-Fords and Jaguars to impress.


The technology and super cars were definately there, a part of GP racing.
Just because of the Dark Age that followed (50s/60s/70s) we must not become guilty of poor judgements, and/or forget the (first) Golden Era before it.

That is all very interesting, and proves that GP racing pre-50s certainly was at the cutting edge of technology, but I think we've gone a bit astray of the point. Monza's initial point was about Formula 1. You must start at the beginning to keep it into context. Individual GPs of the 30s and 40s simply were one-offs. We're talking about the Championship as established in the 50s; a different animal.

When you say the 50s, 60s and 70s were the bad era that needed to be gotten away from, you are throwing out the accepted 'golden age' of Formula 1. As Monza rightly says, Formula 1 never was about the tech, and you rightly have proven that is the case.

Pre-Formula 1 was about the tech as your posts so vividly point out, but when the GPs became a cohesive championship, the technological race that existed in the 30s and 40s shifted to LeMans and other like races. This innovation you so ardently support was never a part of the Formula 1 World Championship. Think on that.

Check my blog please.

There was an european championship as opposed to an world championship. And ofcourse like in the 50/60/70s there were GPs outside the championship.

Indeed after WWII this technology and insanity shifted to Le-Mans and the Can-Am series.
Even in NASCAR, in the the late 60s, the Plymouth Superbird and Charger Daytona were designed using a windtunnel and to use computer analysis for aerodynamics. Something that only in the 1980s becamed standard in F1, wereas the Lotus 49B spoiler car and Lotus 78/79 ground effect car were done by instinct sort of accidental.

DOF_Renault_BMW, on May 25 2007, 11:57 AM, said:

I did read your blog and I enjoyed it. Nothing you've said here disspells Monza's statement that Formula 1 was never about the tech, it was about the drivers. It seems you want Formula 1 to be something that it never was...I wonder that you're not perhaps watching the wrong racing series..?

No I belive that some people see it as an unidimensional driver's competition.

And F1/GP was never that. It is false.

It was and is a multidimensional competition, involving both drivers and teams,
engineers/designers, technology-engineering and the struggle to push things further, to progress.

It was born in the intersection point of the faith in technology/progress and the spirit of competition both typical of the late 19th/early 20th century Europe/western world.

It has lost it's place for a while, but has returned to its place due to it's definitory gene of its DNA.

Wereas Le Mans/FIA WSCC was never indended to be no.1.
It place of glory/superiority was only temporary for it did not possed in its DNA/spirit that hardcore gene/caracteristic for the push. It was just a lucky usurpator.

Took me a while to decipher that. We should agree to disagree then, because you and I shall never agree completely on this.