gio64
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 p.5 #15 · Only 6 F1 cars running at Indy? | |
Hi guys!
I'm back...
Reynard: I did not mean to say that in "interpreting the rules" the engineers make unsafe (or unsafer) cars; what I meant to say is that if I FIA change a rule to reduce the performance, I do it in the name of safety. If you engineer find a way around the rule and still perform at the same level, well, my safety concern has not been resolved, your car goes just as fast. I don't think there is any argument with that; remember the suspensions that moved the cars up and down? The rules introduced forced a minimum height to avoid the cars to use the "ground effect" with the "miniskirts"; reason was, that the lateral acceleration in the corners was too high to be safe. When the engineer gets around the rule and regains the downforce, the car is still going too fast around the corners, so it still is unsafe. Same story with boost regulators; too much power, here's a boost regulator. The team gets around it, the boost regulator doesn't quite work, the car still has too much power. As per safety, well I am very well aware of the efforts of engineers and federations around the world to increase safety, and I think they all have done an amazing job. I also firmly believe, as far as that goes, that the most important element of safety is the distance between the edge of a corner and the concrete wall outside of it. Increase that to infinity and you have hardly any safety problems. I didn't say that safety isn't a concern, I did not go back to my post, but I am quite sure I didn't. Once again, I only mentioned those situation to show how Ferrari doesn't get it its way. The fact that the very nature of F1 generates occasions to "cheat" is a story as old the sport; I personally kind of like it...
As far as the difficulty of installing the chicane, I did not have any doubt that the mighty Americans would have put together a heck of a chicane before we could say... chicane! But the difficulty, as I pointed out, was in determining the right position for it to be safe on either side (going in with enough escape route on the other side, going out into turn 13 slowly enough). We learn on this posts that the asphalt might not have resisted the stress of the braking and accelerating in that area, which adds to the problem. I still don't understand why we complain about the fact that FIA decided not to break the rules to accommodate a tire manufacturer problem.
Now, somebody was arguing above that the fact of having 70% of the teams with the problem makes it OK to not respect the rules, while if the problem would have occurred to the 30% of the teams, then this decision would have been fine. I cannot believe I hear this! According to this person, it is up to those who have leverage to use it for their own convenience! I guess if Ferrari tries to force everyone to use Bridgestone tires or else they don't race anymore becomes a legitimate possibility as long as Ferrari has the right popularity leverage with FIA? After all, there must be 70% of fans that root for them, so, this solution would make most fans happy, and it automatically makes it a good proposal(!?).
I repeat, again, the biggest problem here is that there are 2 tire manufacturers. If we had 10 or 1, this would not have happened. But rules are designed and observed in the name of equality, not in relation to how many teams will be affected by the rules.
Nobody here is answering the most elemental questions, steering (!) away from them.
There were viable alternatives. But Michelin and the 7 teams did not consider any of them. And people are still asking why the federation did not break the rules. I have to hear one direct circumstanciated answer to these questions: why none of the other routes were explored, evaluated and applied? Nobody here is telling us.
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