Interesting video on how the track was built.
 

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Day one was a fiasco. They repaved the entire track with brand new asphalt, and the water valves were just not done to F1 needs. They fixed the issue, and the fans that paid for those tickets deserve a full refund, and some F1 swag as an appeasement.

Qualifying and the race itself went off great. The top three finishers all swapped the lead multiple times. There was lots of passing throughout the race, and overall it was a good race, and a real spectacle. The limo ride to the interviews and then back to the podium was kinda weird.

Overall it was way better than the Miami F1.

I post in all racing threads. I watch any kind of race, NHRA, NASCAR, IndyCar, etc. I rate racing types and find IMSA lower on my list than say a Youtube of a great dirt track, like a mile. F1 just falls into the mix but it's not high enough on my list to pay for it on TV. I don't pay for any, so if they are unavailable, something else usually is.

Therefore I can relate to all kinds of drivers since the era of the Lotus with Clark. There has been a complete cross section of humans driving professionally. A lot of them are aholes while others are not.

Some series' run reasonable tracks with not much fanfare or buffoonery. Others seem more like a rave where a race happened to be at the same time.

Myself, I was an amatuer racer from age 14, mostly in karts for 40 years. We had plenty of jerks in karting, a couple of low brow fist fights and some people sent home. NASCAR too sends people home. F1 so far as I know has not.

Just another comparison. I claim the right to discuss any racing.

Agreed. And the track was a great track. The venue not so much to me.

You're more of a racer than me, my racing career started and ended with a stock classic Mini in one grass track race :D

Wasn't meant to be a pop at you, just wondering why anyone would waste their time discussing something they didn't enjoy

I wouldn't pay to watch F1 either

Also enjoy all types of motorsport, watching Baja 500 and Dakar comes higher on my list to watch than F1

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1700421534.jpg

The Red Bull drivers in their Elvis inspired racing suits.

I forgot to mention that I worked in racing for at least a decade before going into the trades. I worked in the shop and as a pit crew. I worked for a F5000 team and 2 different drag racers, Mickey Thompson being one. I fabricated some, most with fiberglass. I worked at the shop that built the Ford J car body that Ken Miles was killed in. I worked in a motorcycle shop too, and we had both flat track and RR riders. I didn't have the experience on bikes but I rode hard on the street on a cafe racer and in the dirt with a dirt bike. Funny, I enjoyed going round and round locked up like speedway on the dirt way more than I did hauling ass over unseen terrain. Didn't care for jumps at all. I made an early version of the skid pad to ride sideways on concrete lap after lap. Busted my ass many times but never broke anything but the bike.

Give me 4 wheels.

Our path to the shuttle took us by park ferme. It was unexpected. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1700434530.jpg

Hey Paul, did you get to grab a piece of carbon fiber from the mishaps on track?

It would be a cool souvenir of the weekend.

Did not, Glen. Our area was quiet. Our responsibility turned out to be watching the race.

I’ll post more pics later.

Great pic!

There were 82 separate overtakes during the Las Vegas Grand Prix, ranking it #2 in the 2023 season. Not bad. Sure better than the Monaco parade.

It's a piggy

It's even pink!

If LVGP was smart, they would promote the piggy with fun marketing.

^^^ Miss Piggy from the Muppets comes to mind .

That would offend the Muslim countries, and F1 is partly owned by them. With several Arab countries paying lots of money to have a F1 race, it ain't likely they promote that.

The spending cap is on a per season basis.

Yes, Ferrari will field an entirely new chassis next year. So will every other team. That is how this game is played. The pace of development and learning is so great that there is no way on Earth that last year's car would even make the field next year. Every team builds new cars every year, of their own design and manufacture (even if, as discussed earlier, they contract some of that out).

You already noted elsewhere that this was not the last race, so they do need a car for the final race of the season next weekend. They can replace a car if damaged enough to warrant doing so. It has to be the same specification as the one being replaced.

The Williams sucked an entire manhole cover up from the street in Baku the last year Claire was their team principle, severely damaging the car. Baku were required to weld all of the manhole covers down, but missed this one. These cars generate a couple of tons of downforce at speed, several times their own weight.

Granted, lifting a manhole cover might actually be easier, with its surface area to weight, but it's not surprising at all that Sainz's car lifted this thing when it drove over it.

Ferrari said the water valve hit cost them 2 million bucks! Ouch.

I have to assume the mechanics are all on a salary, and paid the same regardless of the tasks at hand. That is just an assumption. I am sure many would have proffered to be back in their rooms getting some sleep, or seeing the sights and maybe a show. I hear there are a few things to do in Vegas. ;)

Glen, the $2 million cost is accurate, had it confirmed by a friend that knows

The crash scrapped the chassis, engine, gearbox and broke the seat

Sainz was extremely lucky not to have been very seriously injured

300kph, was a huge impact

Mr Higgins, the manhole cover was not bolted to the ground. Seems much more plausible the car bottomed out than suction pulled it out of the ground. If that is the story, the problem is fault of the car, rather than the course. If it was my car, I know what story I would be telling

I heard Sainz could see the track through a hole in the chassis.

I also heard that the failure was at the adhesion of the cover frame to the concrete.

I don’t care what you Verstappen still drives like an ass…

The story was quite well covered at the time. The manhole cover was loose. The agreement between the FIA and the Baku race organizers was that Baku securely fasten them down before the race weekend. They missed one. Leclerc actually drove over it before Russel hit it, so I was mistaken as to which car lifted it from its perch. Leclerc somehow avoided damage, but Russel's Williams had to be replaced for the race. It was reported that aero suction under the car is what lifted it. Neither car had bottomed over it.

Manhole covers need to be welded shut when ground-effects cars are racing on a street circuit. It's been that way for decades of street races. (They even had to be welded down for the old Trans-Am and Can-Am cars, because the sticky tires would also pick them up. Not as dramatically but equally dangerous) Welding down the drains and manholes is all part of the track prep.
F1 cars could drive upside down if a suitable track could be built. Plenty of suction. Plenty.

[QUOTE=Jeff Higgins;12135075]The spending cap is on a per season basis.

Yes, Ferrari will field an entirely new chassis next year. So will every other team. That is how this game is played. The pace of development and learning is so great that there is no way on Earth that last year's car would even make the field next year. Every team builds new cars every year, of their own design and manufacture (even if, as discussed earlier, they contract some of that out).



I find this hard to believe. Surely the 2023 Ferrari car would qualify for races in 2024. Isn’t it more of an evolution for a few years once the regulations are set per agreement?

All of the cars bottom out on the straights, constantly. Have you never seen them porpoising and sparking at high speed? If the drain hole cover was proud of the surface then that is an extreme safety hazard and that goes back to the preparation of the track.

I know it's incredible, but yes, they build a new car every year that incorporates what their engineers learned over the course of the previous year. Not just on track, but back home in their offices and shops as well. It's an unrelenting process.

Even a given year's car is developed over the course of the year, with upgrades allowed at specified times to be applied as the season progresses. The top teams will find several seconds per lap over the course of a season, maybe as much as four to five seconds. That is the difference between pole and not qualifying. And that is just through what they are applying as upgrades during the season, the changes made on next year's car put it even further ahead.

The FIA endeavors to reduce pace at the beginning of each season, through regulations changes, to a desired target lap time. They do this throughout all forms of racing under their authority. They have determined that each kind of car, from GT3 class cars to F1 cars, are only "safe" to race at a certain pace. Beyond that begins to exceed a given platform's, and its drivers, ability to react sufficiently on track. It's a fascinating game they play, now having decades of data regarding all of this. A real "cat and mouse" game, wherein the teams seek pace and the FIA seeks to keep a lid on it.

I remember seeing a story a few years ago and one of the teams built a simulator program for a car that just went for performance options, and ignored all the rules. So mega horsepower and torque, active suspension, ABS, traction control, larger aerodynamics and all the go fast things added on, and as light as possible. They calculated the G forces from directions changes would be beyond human endurance for very long and speeds so high that almost any crash would be fatal.

It was an interesting thought program of what engineers could do to a car and make it fast, but only a superhuman could drive it.

I'm not sure which incident you are referring to as Jeff mentioned 2. Pics Show the LV cover to be smaller and a bit taller than a MH cover (I have pulled many) and a butterfly clamp still in place holding part of the receiver which was fractured. We don't know how it was fractured, by cars bottoming or if is was damaged or defective during repaving, or both.

I'll stand by my statement that Ferrari should not have been given a 10 spot penalty for changing chassis. But it does seem to more complicated to allow a team more money for a non fault accident caused by the facility. So maybe let that go. And actually thinking, the grid penalty is subject to the same logic as the financial side. It's a tough call and I'm glad it's not on me.

I can address the new chassis for the next year discussion and maybe Captain can validate. Each team is allowed 2 cars per driver per year and one extra tub. I think also the extra tub is per driver.

After a season of racing the cars need to be retired whether they would be viable the following season or not. No rule says they can't build the same thing again but they have the opportunity to improve.

Again, I need validation, but it reads that each team may bring one car for each driver to a race along with one spare tub for both. This is where I get confused about how many bare tubs are built. But it sounds like a season is 4 cars and 2 tubs total allowance.

Many approved spare parts may be brought to a race, enough to build a car sans the tub. And in some cases as in noses, then some. So if you rebuild the tub that was qualified, you keep your spot. If not, hence the penalty for putting all available parts on the spare tub.

Teams are not allowed to bring a spare car since somewhere back around a dozen years ago (I could go back and re-read for complete accuracy but I didn't). So it does seem the 2nd car for each team sits back at the factory being refreshed while its sibling is racing.

Overall, not too much unlike NHRA top classes. NASCAR is the one that brings a 2nd car pretty much ready to roll out for each driver. Indy Car I did not look up.

Waiting for corrections, if any, and then we all understand.

It would be difficult to write a regulation that is the damage is caused by the facility flaw they team is not penalized. What if a curb is a bit high to prevent the driver from exceeding tack limits and the chassis is damaged.

Martin Brundle mentioned that the regulations are 107 pages and no where in there is a mention of common sense or fair play. The rules state if those parts are replaced, a penalty is incurred. The rules need to be carefully updated.

Do you mean the Red Bull X2010?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_X2010

It was designed for the Gran Turismo game (now in others) by Adrian Newey, and it's silly fast. 1500hp, super streamlined fan car. 500kph and 8G+ cornering.

It would absolutely kill a driver, but that's what video games are for!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83BToA8dpcY

420kph through 130R!

Yeah, like I said, tough call and you make a great example although a high curb could be attributed more so to driver error. Don't need another 107 pages delininating what is facility fault and what is not.

There's the other things that can happen too like hitting a part that came off another car or hitting an animal. I think some brake rotors have hit NASCAR many times. Cristiano da Matta got hit by a deer. Out for 2 seasons and his comeback was a failure. Now that's crappy deal.

Every car entered makes the field for every race. 10 teams, 20 cars, no pre-qualifying.
There's no way the '23 car will have a chance at PP in '24, but it would definitely be on the grid if that's the car Ferrari entered and it passed scrutineering.

That’s what I thought.

Yes, absolutely. Every team runs every race, no one gets sent home like they did in the old days when there were more cars than grid spots. Maybe "qualifying" should be renamed, since all it really does is set the starting order. It not longer determines whether the car will race on Sunday or not.

That said, I believe there is a rule stating that to make the field, every car must post a time within a certain percentage of the pole time. If they fail to do that, they do not race. I would guess that last year's cars would have a difficult time meeting this standard, so they may be effectively precluded from competing on that alone.

You might be right about the slowest time needing a stewards exemption to make the grid; There was definitely a 107% rule when 30 cars would show up to race, but those days are long over and these days, no matter how slow, everyone still makes the grid.

For an example, a quick look at Monaco '22 and '23 shows that in '22, Sainz captured the pole in 1'11.6xx; Zhou was last at 1'14.2xx.

2023 PP was Verstappen at 1'11.3. So, yeah, faster, but not an order of magnitude.

(And I'll grant you that this is a slow circuit. The parameters would obviously be different on the faster circuits,)

The cars definitely get faster, but lots and lots of money gets spent to chase tiny increments.

So this year's car is expected to be 107% or more slower than next? Did I say that right? Or what are you saying the parameters should be to remove a car from the grid due to lack of speed?

You know at the Indy 500 they haven't had a great surplus of cars to insure that the field will be 33 capable cars. 33rd has been pretty far off pace for the last several years. I'm sure making the field is somewhat worth the time and money. Kinda like 'start and park' years ago in NASCAR. A guy could make a living doing that with minimum crew. But I digress.

Abu Dhabi will be interesting; there's a lot of prizes on the line after a long season. (Okay, RB already has most of the prizes). 4 drivers have a chance to capture 4th in the drivers championship; Alonso, Sainz, Lando Norris and LeClerc.

2nd place in the Constructors is up for grabs, Ferrari is 4 points behind Mercedes, and there's millions of dollars of difference between last and not last for the teams at the bottom of the pecking order, so it should be a good race where all the teams will be trying their best to get a result that matters.