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Formula 1, 2020


Andrew P
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4 minutes ago, Bill Radford said:

Nothing "modern" about it - I worked for the NHS from 1971 to 2010 and lost count of the number of "reorganisations".  The worst was bringing in so called managers from outside who included ones from Tesco (who would have stuggled to count trollies) and my last manager from the post office who wouldn't have known what a letter was never mind what a patient was!

 

As an ex-NHS manager - oh yes! Totally agree.

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19 hours ago, Hobby said:

I can't help thinking that he probably caused more issues than he solved and that it was all a gimmick. The mechanics are highly trained and know exactly what they are doing, he doesn't, I'll lay odds that someone was there in the background watching his every step to make sure what he did was ok. I'd compare it with a TV programme where the presenter gets "hands on" but is carefully watched and any mistakes made corrected after he's gone.

 

Gimmick for publicity, nothing more.

 

Many F1 drivers start at a young age in karting with their father as chief, and only mechanic (I remember once seeing Jacque Villeneuve being interviewed on television where he stated that his mother had not shown a lot of interest in this role).  The young kart driver gains a lot of mechanical knowledge while they are helping out their dad. This training in the mechanics of racing machinery stands them in good stead as they progress up into the higher categories of racing.

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56 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Many F1 drivers start at a young age in karting with their father as chief, and only mechanic (I remember once seeing Jacque Villeneuve being interviewed on television where he stated that his mother had not shown a lot of interest in this role).  The young kart driver gains a lot of mechanical knowledge while they are helping out their dad. This training in the mechanics of racing machinery stands them in good stead as they progress up into the higher categories of racing.

Exactly what my dad did with me and it gives you mechanical sympathy as well as the ability to explain issues clearly to your engineer / dad rather than just saying it's not fast enough.

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9 minutes ago, Chrisr40 said:

Exactly what my dad did with me and it gives you mechanical sympathy as well as the ability to explain issues clearly to your engineer / dad rather than just saying it's not fast enough.

 

Which is exactly what I said! I'm not denying they will have some mechanical knowledge, but an F1 car is considerably different and more complex than a kart!! ;)

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4 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

Which is exactly what I said! I'm not denying they will have some mechanical knowledge, but an F1 car is considerably different and more complex than a kart!! ;)

I think you would surprised the degree of skill there is in setting up a modern competition kart.

 

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

Which is exactly what I said! I'm not denying they will have some mechanical knowledge, but an F1 car is considerably different and more complex than a kart!! ;)

 

But would a race driver stop learning the mechanical side of things once they had left karting?. Or wouldn't they retain an interest as they progressed through F4 to F1?.

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13 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

But would a race driver stop learning the mechanical side of things once they had left karting?. Or wouldn't they retain an interest as they progressed through F4 to F1?.

More so I would say.

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28 minutes ago, Andrew P said:

More so I would say.

Daft not to Andy. Plenty of clips on youtube of rally drivers fixing their own cars  when they conk out mid stage  it even happened at Le Mans at least once in recent history I seem to recall. 

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The only very very successful F1 driver that I can recall, that  started off as a mechanic, is Graham Hill, who was a mechanic at lotus before becoming a race driver.  Though he had earlier undertaken an engineering apprenticeship and served in the Royal Navy as a engine room artificer.

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Sure, it's a carefully staged manipulation of social meedja to garner support for a driver in need of, erm, a need to sell hats...Seb's "people" must be kicking themselves at the missed opportunity.

 

My biggest take on a driver's attitude is simply their reaction to not coming first. Kimi, well he's non-plussed if shaking champagne or early bath. But I soon tired of Seb's podium antics in the Red Bull era that second was never good enough, off his tits on victory euphoria but a total grumpy bastard any place lower.

 

C6T. 

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42 minutes ago, rocor said:

The only very very successful F1 driver that I can recall, that  started off as a mechanic, is Graham Hill, who was a mechanic at lotus before becoming a race driver.  Though he had earlier undertaken an engineering apprenticeship and served in the Royal Navy as a engine room artificer.

Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham both knew how to shake a spanner too.

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Undoing a few bits, no doubt at the direction of a mechanic, is hardly difficult and yes it makes a good bit of PR. Lando isn’t the like his seniors rushing off back to Monaco and a drink, he’s been quite open about he’d rather have a glass of milk! and yet is obviously a good laugh to be around. He’s a bit different to the others and despite the cynicism he might well have felt a bit guilty about Sunday from what he said and decided to try and help as a thank you. 
Ultimately it doesn’t matter I’ll let Lando’s driving talk and enjoy it as harmless entertainment. It’s nice to have a bunch of drivers whose passion for driving is so obvious and yet still have a laugh on screen jibing at each other and making it entertaining Tv again ;) 

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18 hours ago, Chrisr40 said:

https://www.planetf1.com/news/ferrari-possibly-victim-of-new-spy-saga-report/

 

If it's true that they were hacked then it's a bit pathetic on the part of who ever did it, dont mess with the family...

In view of the "reorganisation" more likely a leak?

 

Although my reaction is much the same as Toto's....

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44 minutes ago, Bill Radford said:

In view of the "reorganisation" more likely a leak?

 

Although my reaction is much the same as Toto's....

Much as it pains me to say it about an Italian team , it performed best when not run by Italians. Ref the espionage I would be more surprised if it was a leak than them being hacked in all honesty. Spying and its ilk are not unknown in F1 remember the McLaren saga. Should it be proven true I will be fascinated to know which of the 3 other manufacturers it might have been - excluding customer teams as I think they would be less likely.

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19 hours ago, Chrisr40 said:

...If it's true that they were hacked then it's a bit pathetic on the part of who ever did it, dont mess with the family...

Don't believe a word of it. That's window dressing straight out the Dave Jones playbook: 'the whole world conspired against us to piss in our cornflakes'.

 

If the rules are too complicated for Ferrari's employees to understand, best call it a day.

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On 22/07/2020 at 22:08, PaulRhB said:

Sadly it’s true of many businesses that they don’t record why they don’t do something because they’ve tried it before. Then you bring in managers and give them targets and unsurprisingly they come up with the same ideas and find they still don’t work . . .

There is a solution called asking the  experienced staff

 

To take a slightly contrarian stance: "We tried that before and it didn't work" can sometimes be wheeled out all too quickly (and, sadly, all too often by the "experienced staff") to dismiss a suggestion for improvement.  Unless you know why it didn't work last time (e.g. you actually had direct experience of trying and failing to make it work, rather than just watching from the sidelines) it's really no help.  Granted you don't want to make the same mistakes over and over again, but unless you understand what the mistake/problem actually was last time it was tried (rather than simply "it didn't work") you never really learn anything, and you risk dismissing what could actually be a workable approach in today's circumstances as opposed to yesterday's.

 

An example from the railway world might be the tilt mechanism on the APT: BR "tried that and it didn't work".  The Italians picked up the idea and ran with it, and made it work very successfully - so much so that one UK TOC ended up buying the Italian trains.  The reason it "didn't work" on the APT was arguably as much to do with internal and external politics and PR as actual engineering.

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13 minutes ago, 4630 said:

US, Mexican and Brazilian GPs now cancelled.  To be replaced by three further races in Europe at Germany's Nurburgring,  Imola in Italy, and an F1 debut for Portugal's Portimao track.

 

Cancellation of US, Mexican and Brazilian GPs.

Not surprising considering the Corvid-19 situation in those countries.

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With no fixed end date to this year's season, the number of races changing as the season progresses, and the possibility of later races being cancelled at almost no notice (which could have a significant impact were the Championship to be tightly-fought), part of me wonders whether it would have been better to have had this year as a "friendly" season. with no Championship points on offer, and each race being fought on its own merits.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

With no fixed end date to this year's season, the number of races changing as the season progresses, and the possibility of later races being cancelled at almost no notice (which could have a significant impact were the Championship to be tightly-fought), part of me wonders whether it would have been better to have had this year as a "friendly" season. with no Championship points on offer, and each race being fought on its own merits.

 

 

Yup and trialled things like reverse grids etc..but it's an opportunity lost 

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