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F1 - GP (General Purpose)
Chode ^
| 8/5/2009
| Chode
Posted on 08/05/2009 7:57:45 PM PDT by Chode
This will be a general purpose thread for F1 news and pings that really don't require a thread of their own.
TOPICS: Sports
KEYWORDS: chode; f1; f1gp; formula1; formulaone; grandprix; kmg
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To: All
From a collection of brief opinion pieces by F1 pundits at The Race-dot-com:
Beyond saving? Our verdict on F1’s plans to fix 2026 rules
Edd Straw says this was a botched job from the start. It’s not fixable and the best they can do is mitigate the damage. “...[T]he maths of the energy equation can’t be changed entirely....”
Glenn Freeman thinks the (very powerful) people who wanted F1 to run half on battery power are getting exactly what they’d hoped for and they’ll bide their time until the fans either get used to battery racing or get tired of complaining about it (after all, the got used to DRS and KERS, both of which were the first [artificial] steps toward where the sport is today).
Ben Anderson says you can’t polish a turd. “...They’re still fundamentally rubbish. No amount of fiddling with the energy recovery limits a bit is going to change that....”
Jonathan Noble doesn’t so much mind the Mario Kart racing, he just wishes the drivers ultimately had control of their cars rather than the guy who wrote the computer code those cars run on.
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/our-verdict-on-f1-plans-to-fix-2026-rules/
To: All
To: All
To: Paal Gulli
Thanks so much for all of these updates!
Just took the cover off the fountain, pump gets immersed tomorrow — a sure sign of Spring!
7,204
posted on
04/09/2026 11:24:35 AM PDT
by
BBB333
((The Power Of Trump Compels You!))
To: BBB333
Everyone who is or pretends to be a fan of F1 needs to read this. Please click the link at the bottom to toss Motorsport Magazine a dog yummy for running this.
The false ceiling: why F1’s 2026 rules are hiding its best drivers
Pablo Elizalde April 10, 2026
The 2026 regulations have not just changed how Formula 1 cars are driven, they have changed what it is possible to see
...“It’s quite a misleading thing, because it’s not some constant,” he said. “It depends upon the circumstances and it depends upon whether their car allows them to exploit their talent. And sometimes you’ll get a false ceiling put upon it.”
The concept is straightforward in principle.
A driver’s ability doesn’t change from race to race, or from one regulatory era to the next. What changes is the extent to which the car — and the rules that govern it — allows that ability to express itself.
When the match between driver talent and car characteristics is good, the ceiling disappears and the driver’s true level becomes visible.
When the match is poor, or when the regulations actively suppress certain skills, what you see is a driver performing below their actual capability.
The ceiling is real in its effects, but artificial in its cause...
...Verstappen’s problem
To understand why the 2026 rules hit Verstappen particularly hard, you first need to understand what makes him exceptional.
His defining skill is what happens at the entry to low and medium-speed corners, specifically, the ability to generate very fast rotation of the car through a precise combination of braking and steering inputs, while simultaneously avoiding the rear tyre scrub that normally comes as a consequence.
“Most drivers, when they try to do that, yes, you can get the quick rotation by doing that, but you’ll tend to not gain as much lap time doing that as you then lose from the excess scrubbing of the rear,” Hughes explains.
“So he can pivot on an incredibly narrow point. And that’s where when you make the car really pointy, that’s where the gap between him and a good but not a great driver really increases.”
The problem is that this technique is energy-intensive.
The very act of rotating the car quickly and getting on the power early draws from the battery reserve that Verstappen then needs on the straights.
Under the 2026 energy management framework, driving the way he is built to drive means arriving at the end of a straight with less electrical deployment available than a driver who has nursed the car more conservatively through the corner.
He is, in effect, being penalised for his own strengths.
“When he can get the car to do that, all it means is that he’s using up energy that then he doesn’t have down the straights and he gets punished for doing that,” Hughes adds.
The current Red Bull chassis compounds the issue further with low-speed understeer, meaning Verstappen is fighting both the car and the regulations simultaneously. The false ceiling sits very low.
It is worth being clear about what this does and doesn’t explain.
It doesn’t mean Verstappen is performing at the same level as the drivers ahead of him in the standings. It means that the gap between what he is achieving and what he is capable of is likely larger than at any point in his career.
That frustration, the sense of being unable to access his own ability, appears to be at the heart of his stated desire to retire if the regulations don’t change.
Leclerc’s advantage
Charles Leclerc‘s false ceiling operates differently, and understanding why requires a different kind of technical description.
Where Verstappen’s gift is in the entry phase of a corner – the rotation – Leclerc’s is in sustaining the car at the absolute limit of rear grip through the corner’s entirety.
Hughes describes it as acrobatic: a capacity to hold the car right on the edge of adhesion, not for a fraction of a second but throughout the arc, making constant micro-adjustments to keep it there.
This is the kind of skill that expresses itself most completely on a final Q3 run, when track conditions are at their best and the driver can push progressively beyond what they have done earlier in the session.
The value of that escalation is precisely what the 2026 qualifying framework suppresses.
“He’s punished for this new regulation set because when he goes to do something really spectacular, something that he’s saved up for the final run in Q3, the algorithm doesn’t recognise what he’s done because the algorithm is based itself on what he’s done so far,” Hughes says.
“There isn’t that room for that great improvisation as he feels the track changing, he feels the outer limits of the car more finely.
“So they’re both very frustrated by these regulations, but they’re in totally different positions, even though they’re drivers of quite similar ability
The algorithm, in other words, is calibrated on the past and cannot accommodate the future. A driver who wants to do something they have not done before in the session finds the system working against them rather than with them. The ceiling is imposed not by the car or the driver’s own capacity, but by the logic of the software itself.
Leclerc’s response has been characteristically thorough, however. He has assembled his own team of software engineers to model the energy deployment permutations he might encounter across different track conditions and scenarios, work that goes beyond what his team provides as standard...
...The broader implication
The false ceiling matters beyond the individual frustrations of two drivers. It is a problem with how Formula 1 is read and understood.
If the regulations systematically suppress the distinguishing skills of the sport’s best practitioners, then what the on-screen product reflects is not a true hierarchy of talent.
It is a hierarchy of regulatory compatibility, of who happens to be best suited to these particular rules, at this particular moment.
That may produce competitive results, but it doesn’t produce an accurate picture of where the drivers actually stand.
And for a sport that has always sold itself, in part, on the promise that the fastest driver in the fastest car will win, that is a problem worth taking seriously.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/the-false-ceiling-why-f1s-2026-rules-are-hiding-its-best-drivers/
This is a natural and inevitable consequence of the FIA mandating so much and leaving to little design and development to the teams’ discretion. They’re wasting talent wholesale, which is the most unforgivable sin any sports promotion can commit. —PG
To: Paal Gulli
Sorry, BBB333, wasn’t meaning to address that specifically to you. I really wish we could edit posts here.
To: All
I find this an interesting proposition.
There are some few exceptions -- like prizefighting -- but for most sporting events (football, motor racing, et Al) you get a better view overall from your lazyboy than from the most expensive seat in the venue.
Because TV coverage these days is that good.
I doubt there's a seat at any race track in the F1 universe, regardless of the cost, where you can see what's going on over the entire circuit. In most cases, unless you buy a deluxe suite, the best you can hope for is a view of one turn and parts of the adjoining straightaways. But from your lazyboy, you can see everything.
The cheapest seats for race day at Myjammy are $535. Plus parking. And it's a May afternoon in Myjammy, so figure another $20 per person for (2) beverages, too. And probably snackages.
And traffic jams getting in and out. And you got to get there early to deal with the crowds and finding your seat.
Or you could go to the Imax. There's no traffic jam getting in, no charge to park, you don't have to get there early. You get to watch on a wide screen with surround sound in climate controlled comfort. And if the noise of the crowd is you're thing, you get a smattering of that, too.
At the track, if you blink, you miss it. But from your lazyboy, if it was important, there's always a replay.
And all you're out is 30 bucks. And you don't even have to go to Flarduh.
I can dig it.
To: All
Jean Todt has decided it’s time to come clean and admit that Michael Schumacher was deliberately cheating (and doing it badly) both when he crashed into Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in ‘97 (and for which he was disqualified for the entire season), and when he pretended to crash (and stalled the engine) at Rascasse at Monaco in ‘06 to bring out the yellow flag and scupper Fernando Alonso’s qualifying lap.
https://racingnews365.com/michael-schumacher-cost-himself-two-f1-titles-after-losing-control
Which is why I can’t call him the greatest of all time. Because if you’re THAT great, you wouldn’t need to cheat. And yes, I put Senna in that same boat.
He even tried to run cars off the track when he un-retired and clearly had lost his edge and wasn’t anywhere close to being in contention.
And I doubt many were swayed back then by Todt’s lame explanations. And I have diminished respect for him, too, for maintaining the lie for all these years.
Monaco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B57ZFHnjeUQ
Jerez:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T8NFkM6vPY
Blocking Barrichello at Hungaroring in 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzpYilkKrA
To: Paal Gulli
PG, again thanks for the posts...
Imax viewing of an F1 race — interesting.
There is an Imax in West Yellowstone, about 70 miles south from me but they usually just play a movie about grizzly bears...
I’ve been to exactly one Imax and that was in Minneapolis, MN in the 90’s.
I had been working at a resort in the central part of the state and had my first few day off in at least three weeks. Went to the Imax with some friends and the show was about the seasons in Minnesota:
Winter and road repair was the narrators reply and for several minutes I watched photos of snow conditions (I spent my winters at Big Sky Ski Resort so I KNOW snow) and then road repair crews — I fell asleep.
OOPS! Shouldn’t have done that!
I was awaken to Pinchas Zukerman Vivaldi conducting the four seasons St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the music was LOUD!
Apparently while I was asleep an Imax camera had been attached to the underside of a helicopter...and the aircraft was making a dive into and eventually pull-up just above a field of wheat.
I awoke during the dive to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtzNrYW5Im0
I tell you I nearly screamed..It took me a few seconds to remember I was in an Imax theater.
Would I watch an F1 race at an Imax? Hell ya!
40 years ago today I was flying to Casper, WY for a two week contract job, we were the last flight out of BZN at 6:15 AM then the airport closed.
CPR was closed so we rerouted to DEN where I watched the Golden Bear win his 6th Green Jacket at the Masters while eating a burger and consuming adult beverages. My flight to CPR was called just after the jacket presentation.
CBS has a documentary on it called: 1986 on today at noon Eastern.
WATCH it!
7,209
posted on
04/12/2026 5:51:47 AM PDT
by
BBB333
((The Power Of Trump Compels You!))
To: All
India’s Minister of Sport issued the following statement:
“There will be an F1 race in India in 2027. This is 100 percent happening. The first race will be at the Buddh International Circuit.”
Except it 100% ISN’T happening. PlanetF1.com claims they heard directly from a FIA “spokesperson” who told them, “...[W]e won’t be racing there in 2027...” and then used a bunch of weasel words to the effect that it isn’t impossible that F1 might race there again further down the line, but it WON’T BE next year.
https://www.planetf1.com/news/f1-india-2027-race-ruled-out-buddh-circuit-return-denied
The linked article continues that the Jaypee group still hasn’t paid off the $51 million USD (equivalent) in taxes they were in arrears that caused the 2014 even to be cancelled. And I can’t imagine the Indian tax man doesn’t charge interest and penalties in these cases, which means it must by this time be a pretty staggering amount.
I also think it’s safe to presume that there can be no future Indian GPs unless that debt is settled first. All of which adds up to what the heck did this guy think he was accomplishing by claiming they’d have an F1 race at Buddh in 2027 when apparently he hadn’t even bothered to let the FIA in on his little secret?
Stay tuned to this channel!
To: All
To: Chode; AAABEST; al_c; arbitrary.squid; arderkrag; atc23; Augie; BBB333; Bad~Rodeo; bajabaja; ...
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/how-ferrari-and-red-bulls-innovative-upside-down-rear-wings-compare.1ZguF0OkLRJNIlWvt7C0HYHow Ferrari and Red Bull’s innovative upside-down rear wings compare
Red Bull have joined Ferrari in running a rotating rear wing at the Miami Grand Prix.
May 02, 2026
.webp)
Red Bull caught the eye during Friday’s track action at the Miami International Autodrome when they unleashed their own upside-down rear wing design.
It comes after Ferrari made headlines at pre-season testing in Bahrain by debuting a radical, rotating rear wing element, developed to maximise performance under F1’s new-for-2026 regulations, which feature active aerodynamics.
This year, along designated straight sections, flaps on cars’ front and rear wings move to an ‘open’ position and engage a low-drag mode, flattening the wings to reduce drag and increase top speed, while in the corners, they run in their default ‘closed’ position to maintain downforce and provide more grip.
Ferrari’s ‘flip-flop’ creation
After the initial Barcelona Shakedown, Ferrari got the entire F1 paddock talking on Day 2 of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit by revealing what would be dubbed by driver Lewis Hamilton as the ‘flip-flop’ wing.
Instead of simply switching from an angled to a flat position, the special rear wing component flips completely upside down, creating a bigger gap for air to travel through and reducing drag when travelling down the straights.
Ferrari opted against using it at the season-opening round in Australia, but it returned for Friday practice at the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint weekend, where it was subsequently removed to allow engineers to further tweak the concept.
“It’s great to see that the team are fighting… the team are pushing, chasing and really working overtime back at the factory to be able to bring upgrades, because that’s the name of the game,” said Hamilton in Shanghai.
“Last year I didn’t get to see the team’s full potential in that mode, because we were focused on this year’s car. I don’t know if it has an official name… Someone said ‘Macarena’, I have no idea why! It’s the ‘flip-flop’ wing!”
F1.com technical expert Mark Hughes explained exactly how the wing works after it broke cover.
“In normal downforce mode, the wing’s upper surface is of a smaller surface area than the underside,” he wrote. “It is this which creates the air pressure difference between above and below – and that, in turn, creates downforce.
“With the wing flipped, the smaller surface area becomes the lower one – thereby creating more space in the gap than in a conventional flattened (but not upside-down) flap.”
Red Bull’s own upside-down rear wing
While Ferrari’s wing returned once more in Miami, and remained on the car during Sprint Qualifying, this time it was not alone, for rivals Red Bull had also introduced a striking design.
From the television footage and photographs captured throughout FP1, Red Bull’s version appears to produce an even bigger slot gap – the upper element rising above the rear wing endplates, while Ferrari’s sits underneath them.
“To allow more travel, the mechanism and attachments to the elements have been revised, necessitating a subtle altering of the third profile near centreline,” reads the explanation from Red Bull – within the FIA’s pre-weekend car update submissions document – regarding the changes to their rear wing.
“Once it’s fully open, the slot gap – the gap between the lower edge and the wing when it’s fully open – is utterly enormous," explains F1 technical expert Sam Collins in the latest edition of Tech Talk. "It’s very different and more extreme perhaps than the Ferrari design as Red Bull are probably trying to generate a little bit of lift from those inverted elements."
It comes as part of an extensive upgrade package, also covering the front wing, sidepods, engine cover and floor, aimed at bringing Red Bull closer to rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren after a tricky start to their 2026 season.
.webp)
“It was a massive amount of work done to deep dive into what was limiting us, and to bring updates,” team boss Laurent Mekies told Sky Sports F1.
“We had upgrades planned, like everybody else, but on top of that everyone [at the factory] in Milton Keynes had to try and get around and get to the bottom of what was limiting us.”
He then insisted that Red Bull’s rear wing design was original, rather than a copy of Ferrari’s.
“As much as you will not believe me, I have to say, in fairness to the guys [in the design team]… the guys came up with that concept far, far before we hit the track and we saw what everybody else has been doing,” he added.
“But as we said, we had bigger issues to solve before to be able to bring that rear wing to the track, and it’s a good indication of how hard everyone is pushing.”
7,212
posted on
05/03/2026 2:53:27 PM PDT
by
Yo-Yo
(Is the /Sarc tag really necessary?)
To: Yo-Yo
Does this design allow air to fill or shape the void directly behind the car thus reducing drag which would increase speed?
7,213
posted on
05/03/2026 4:10:50 PM PDT
by
Lockbox
(politicians, they all seemed like game show host to me.... Sting)
To: Yo-Yo
Thanks!
It was fun to watch the Reb Bull wing in action, I was surprised to actually witness it at first.
Lot’s of fun!
Best
7,214
posted on
05/04/2026 5:41:34 AM PDT
by
BBB333
((The Power Of Trump Compels You!))
To: Lockbox
Does this design allow air to fill or shape the void directly behind the car thus reducing drag which would increase speed? I haven't heard of the exact aerodynamic explanation for the advantages to this wing over the conventional wing.
Conjecture is that it might generate a bit of lift in that mode, partially cancelling the downforce of the lower portion of the wing, allowing for less rear tire rolling resistance.
Ferrari has tested this wing in practice quite a few times, but I believe this the Miami Sprint is the first time they used it in an actual race.
Red Bull's wing came as a complete surprise to everyone, as it hasn't been seen in testing (to my knowledge.)
We'll know if it's viable if Ferrari and/or Red Bull keep it for the next race.
7,215
posted on
05/04/2026 6:21:03 AM PDT
by
Yo-Yo
(Is the /Sarc tag really necessary?)
To: Yo-Yo; Lockbox; All
I didn't find any plausible explanations in my usual sources so I looked up Craig Scarborough (AKA Scarbs). He's not as visible on the Internet as he once was but I found him at motorsport.tech. Back in the day he was always the best-informed freelance F1 writer but on the matter of the macarena wing (and the exhaust wing) he's as much in the dark as anyone else.
"Quite how this gains performance is yet to be fully explained to us."
Which is his coy way of saying he's not been able to figure it out.
Apparently the F1 teams are getting better at keeping secrets. And if even Scarbs is waiting for an explanation, I see no point in burning out my few remaining brain cells trying to figure it out. I'll just watch and wait for the "official" word.
According to Mark Hughes, it likely has some connection to the sneaky bit of the SF26, the part that the Scuderia bragged about in the pre-seaon that "couldn't be copied."
The TR states that the differential can extend no further rearward than 6mm (~2-1/3") behind the axle. And the rear edge of the diffuser has the same limit, which means that wheelbase (usually) indirectly determines the diffuser's extreme limit.
Except that rear half-axles on the SF-26 are angled forward slightly allowing them to mount the diff 6mm further aft than if the rear axles ran straight across. Which also means their diffuser is 6mm longer than anybody else's. And no one can copy this because the locations of all those components are locked in at homologation.
I think what Hughes is getting at is that Ferrari took a holistic approach with its treatment of the rear end and the longer diffuser's interaction with the exhaust plume and the rear wing.
I don't know that every team has an "exhaust wing" but the top teams certainly do. Some are inside the exhaust itself (under the guise of "bracing," as permitted by the TR) and some are extensions of the diffuser. Ferrari's is one of the latter and its design has been changing over time.
Again, Scarbs says it makes "no sense" but offers it probably is intended to cause upwash in the exhaust flow, probably to distance that flow from the exit of the diffuser, promoting expansion of the air exiting the diffuser and increasing its effectiveness.
And if the macarena wing, when deployed, is making lift, that means the air pressure beneath the inverted wing is higher than the pressure above it. So maybe they're inverting the wing as means of trapping the exhaust upwash in the same way they've used aerodynamic surfaces in the past to direct air along the sides of the floor of the car to keep ground effect trapped beneath it.
Until this season there was a TR that required there be no obstructions in or aft of the exhaust exit, but that got deleted, which opened the door for all the teams to experiment with these exhaust wings. And there's already a rumor that the FIA will go back to the old rule, evffectively banning them for the 2027 season.
As to Red Bull's macarena wing, that is a horse of a different color because it was developed contemporaneously with Ferrari's and is not a copy of it. Mekies claims theirs was first but I do believe Ferrari brought theirs to the FIA's attention first to get their approval. Red Bull tested it at Silverstone on a "filming" day. In any case, it is unlikely to be used with the same intent as Ferrari's because Red Bull's rear end treatment (and especially diffuser) are altogether different.
I've mentioned before that if it was worth a hoot in general terms, Adrian Newey would have one of his own. Unless he's convinced that the Aston Martin is a lost cause and a macarena wing's marginal gain is too marginal to be bothered with. But I read just today that's he's unwell and working from home. He hasn't been at a race since Melbourne and was hospitalized for a spell with some undisclosed illness.
In any case, I still count Newey the bellweather. I won't believe it's all that and a bag of crisps until I see one on the Aston Martin.
To: All
FIA chief claims F1 engine changes were blocked, and fans will hate the reason why "During the discussions, the option of reducing the electric component and allowing more gasoline power was on the table," he told Auto Motor und Sport. "However, this would have required a so-called super-majority. That means most manufacturers would have had to agree. But they didn't, and we can't make that decision over their heads. That's also why it's not part of the package.
"One thinks this gives me an advantage. Another thinks I'm winning races right now, so I don't want to change anything, and the third says I need 16 months to develop a new engine and 2027 isn't realistic."
https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/1082594/fia-f1-engine-changes-blocked-2026-regulations/
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/benzin-limit-erhoehung-mehr-verbrenner-power/
Liberty Media also has veto power because they own the joint. And they're in bed with the environmental socialists, so it was dead from the start.
To: All
"I might get shot for saying this, but sadly some of the overtakes are just totally false" -- Nigel Mansell
https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/1082597/f1-2026-regulations-nigel-mansell/
“I mean, some of the overtakes look great and then you come out the next corner, and then the car just blasts past you and the other car goes backwards because the 'computer' is giving you the extra power not at the right time, and the driver doesn’t control that obviously, because he wouldn’t have employed it.”
“So I think you’ve got to be very careful because, forget me, it doesn’t matter about me, but the fans around the world, I know an awful lot of them are very grumpy. And to be fair to the fans, I agree with them.”
-- Nigel Mansell
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/f1/nigel-mansell-f1-regulations-overtakes-37082174
To: AAABEST; al_c; arbitrary.squid; arderkrag; atc23; Augie; BBB333; Bad~Rodeo; bajabaja; BatGuano; ...
"The racing is fine," so sayeth F1's Baghdad Bob, Stefano Domenicali.
But then there's this:
"...The idea is to ditch the notional 50/50 power split between the internal combustion engine and electrical elements and move to a ration that is much closer to 60/40...."
----------------------------------------------------------
Can you imagine how much flak the FIA must be receiving to make this move so soon in the season?
What they should do is ditch the hybrid idea anyway because it was only adopted for POLITICAL reasons and ADDS NOTHING to the competitive aspect of the sport as conceived and groomed for 17 years.
To: Paal Gulli
it ADDS NOTHING I hate to disagree but in fact it SUBTRACTS EVERYTHING.
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