Formula 1 2021 - General Discussion Thread (Read 1st post rules)

The Schumacher documentary is now on Netflix.

I hope not, SA are a disgrace on the planet, and their ownership would turn F1 into a joke with races in rubbish areas on rubbish tracks.

Watched the first half at lunchtime. Brought back a lot of memories, it's essential watching for any F1 fan.

Didn’t think it was great. It glossed over or entirely skipped quite a lot and didn’t really capture his win-at-all-costs drive.

The part with Mick was quite touching — hard not to root for him.

I called it at the time, as did Christian Horner, that the new slower pitstops the FIA mandated that were supposedly for "safety" but came completely out of the blue in response to a request from Mercedes just after Red Bull had beaten them in a race in large part due to their more efficient pitstops, have proven just the opposite of being safe and have just made mistakes more likely for the most efficient teams who now have to unnaturally and artificially slow themselves down.

It's now been confirmed, as I thought when watching it live, that the slow pitstop for Verstappen was entirely due to the failure a new process they put in to add an artificial delay between fitting the wheel and taking off in order to comply with the ridiculous new regulation. How ironic it is that something Mercedes forced through under the guise of "safety" almost resulted in their own driver being seriously injured if not for the halo.

Still, the rule change achieved its real goal and stopped Max stretching his lead in the championship - without it he'd have been second to Ricciardo at worst, with a great shout of winning that race.

This was only the second race with the new regulation in place, I wonder if we'll see many more botched pitstops, it could become the story of the season.

I know you think you're being clever with that comment but it was completely predictable, and people did predict it, for example here: https://racer.com/2021/06/25/horner-angry-at-technical-directive-to-slow-f1-pit-stops/

I predicted it in this thread a few months ago, I'd find the post if I knew how on the new forums.

Introducing an enforced artificial delay into a pit process that was a well oiled machine previously was always going to increase the probability of errors being made.

I don't agree with these new pitstop rules either but at least it made the race more exciting and allowed another team to win and not just win but get a 1-2 which was great.

So I suppose it worked by making the race more exciting.

Its a concerted effort to stop Max Verstappen winning the championship, orchestrated by Toto and Hamilton who lobbied for the rule change because red bull were faster than them at pitstops. This was the direct cause of the slow pit stop for Max in Monzo

Or in reality is that there is a .2 second delay between the time the wheel gun is released and the light can turn green, which still means the faster teams will have faster pit stops. Horner has admitted the stop in Monza was a human error as a result of the new technical directive. What I suspect from watching it is the guy on the front right did not follow the correct procedure so the light did not turn to green after the delay.

Because the lights that didn’t release the car only exists because of the new rules. Previously Red Bull just put the tyres on and as soon as they were on they immediately got a green light and went. They were more efficient at this than their rivals, who typically had a 0.2 second or more delay in their reaction times at this point in the pitstop.

Mercedes didn’t like that Red Bull were so quick, put in a complaint, and the rules were changed out of the blue mid season so there now needed to be a 0.2 second delay between putting the tyres on and going, or else there would be a penalty. The light that didn’t change was the one that artificially inserts that 0.2 second delay into what was previously an extremely well oiled and heavily practiced process, and for whatever reason it went wrong and didn’t update as it should have and left them stranded.

As the sport has always been. Whether it is tyre thread width measurements, double diffusers, blown diffusers, mass dampers, blown exhausts, team radio protocols, fric suspension.

The only difference is the team looking for the changes are no longer red.

I agree with your second point, the rules at the start of the season should be binding, for better or worse. If a team gains an advantage because they are able to comply with the rules and still gain an advantage then it should be up to the other teams to deal with it.

Yes, as said above by another, I also like the ingenuity aspect of F1. The more innovation, the more I'm interested. Less protests please.

Shouldn't there be a skill in driving the car and not relying on engineers telling you what to do and how to do it? So much of the human skill has been removed from driving with engineering advances.

We already had plenty of human error in pit stops.

Bottas/Danny Ric in Monaco

Hamilton in Germany

Russell in Bahrain

Nearly every Haas stop over a few races a few years ago results in a cross thread retirement.

At the end of the day it's humans who stop the car on its marks, jack it up, remove one set of wheels, attach a new set, drop the car, and take off. Seeing all that happen in under 2 seconds is impressive as hell.