Ross Brawn, merc (qualifying spoiler)

[450knotOffice]

Originally Posted by legion

1) Michael Schumacher as the #2 driver. He's apparently comfortable doing this, which I think speaks highly of his character. He's also damn good at holding up the field without running afoul of the rules.

I found it interesting that he allowed Nico to gap him and initially had a 1.6 sec gap to Button, who then closed to within about .5 seconds, at which point Schumacher promptly pulled back out to a 1.6 second gap. Initially, I thought "uh oh, his tires are going off again". But then he pulled away from Button pretty easily.

I was disappointed that his race was ended early because of something as simple as not getting a wheel on properly during a pit stop.

[TheMentat]

Originally Posted by Flieger

Ya think? That was what took them so long to develop them. Had to give the FIA the show they wanted. The deal was Pirelli wanted more importance and attention paid to the tires. So by making the really soft tires and then hard tires it would add "spice". Then they found there was too much of a gap last season so they tweaked them for this year to be more equal.

F1 now seems to be nothing but artificial spice. I much prefer seeing innovation pursured in areas other than getting around aerodynamic restrictions.

I have the opposite view on this (sort of). Yes it's all "artificial spice", but I think that's a good thing...

I love to see technological innovation and heterogeneity among the cars in the field. However, these things make boring racing, and cost a lot of money. When one team comes up with a really clever idea, it usually means they will dominate on the track, and the races will simply become a procession. The Williams "active ride" cars are a perfect example of this... they dominated (with relatively inferior drivers I might add). Those sorts of seasons are boring for spectators (the customers) and are ultimately bad for business.

"Driver aids" are a similar issue. I'm fairly confident that a driver-less car could qualify on pole using today's technology... but would be terrible for "the show".

Facing these problems, I think they've done a great job of tweaking the regulations. They've created a rule framework that severely limits the incremental gains available per dollar spent, thereby tightening up the lap times of the field. Coupling that with limited "diver aids", and tires that reward the drivers that can manage them, and we get great races:

- teams appear to be rewarded not just for the work that takes place in the pre-season, but the work at the track as well
- drivers are clearly having to manage their tires
- lots of on-track passing (and not just in the DRS zones)


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[Flieger]

I don't like the idea of traction control but I prefer watching the cars to the drivers. Which is why I like endurance racing more.