Be Excellent To Each Other

And we haven't even got to their really fucking stupid budget cap idea yet, which won't work any more than it would ahve worked before.

Surely this would only work if all races were a set distance? Maybe an average speed over it all? but that would make maths hard, i guess.

Races are a set distance (except Monaco)

Yeah. Not finishing a long race wouldn't be as bad as not finishing a short race.

D'oh!

But still not the same speed. Singapore will take much longer than Monza despite similar distances due to a lower avg. speed.

Correct but then 100m at the first corner at Malaysia takes longer than 100m in the middle of the long straight of the same circuit too and that's not a problem.

Think of it like 1 very very long circuit.

And it would stop people from retiring when they might not finish, everyone would do their best to finish the race. even if they were 3/4 laps down.

Malc

Say if someone's 4 laps down, though; the race finishes when the winner crosses the line. Would then the lapped competitors need to carry on driving until they'd completed the same number of laps? If not, they'd have an advantage because their races will have been shorter.

Because, like, that's a bit silly.

well, obviously it needs a bit of work, but yes they would need to continue to the end, or given a "standard" time for the remaining laps.

Malc

A bit of work? If your theories aren't workable out of the box, they're pointless, man!

Personally I'd have liked the MotoGP points system.

I thought the number of laps was set to approximate a consistent time rather than distance, being a heavily-advertising-focussed TV spectator sport. Hockenheim, pre-chicanes, used to be about 4 billion miles because they spent 90% of the lap at 200+mph? Not that I'd be surprised to find myself wrong on this.

Also, a season race with a field of competitors finishes when the second-last competitor crosses the line. It's only won when the first crosses it. And don't they still have the 107% rule?

WRC ranks on overall-time-per-venue-including-penalties, doesn't it? That works.

Correct, but if someone's five laps down they don't race for five more laps. They finish on the same lap as the winner.

Not in a time-to-end ruleset! When 107% is reached your start spraying water on the difficult corners, and pushing criminals onto the straights.

Nope, they're 300km or so.

The 107% rule hasn't existed for years, race FINISHES do have a "must have completed 90% of race distance to be classified".

The Hockenheim race has been 306km in both the old and new configs, the race took nearly 10 minutes longer in 2002 compared to 2001. (67 laps of new, 45 laps of old)

Crikey. Do they have a clue at all?

Whatever the points system, if there has been a problem with F1 for the past few seasons its the fact that even after the champagne has been sprayed, you can't be sure where everyone finished until all the stewards enquiries are done with (or in the case of Belgium last year, about 2 months later). Fix this first, then fuck about with the points.

Exactly. There's no point trying to encourage them to race if you then penalise them every time they do so.

Aw, I was looking forward to the new points system. Myp summed it up quite well: Fucking right.

Except of course you won't get that effect because there's still the stewards there to penalise overtaking.

And you'd lose dramatic charges through the field to 6th from the back by people because you'd be better off parking the car and saving one of your 8 engines.

Quite.

Oh good, there's already major grumbling going on between the teams about some teams running rear diffusers and others not. So that'll be no results from Melbourne until a Stewards enquiry if any of the teams running diffusers win.

Any word on when the new F1 game is due out?

That you're not - there's still the construction championship. Also, I assume that if there was a tie, the points would decide the winner.
Still, I guess I'll see what they do in 2010.

No-one important gives a shit about the constructors.



All teams are running them, your car would be useless without.

Some teams are running diffusers with 2 sections, one the size of the allowed size of a diffuser, one further up in the area where you're allowed bodywork. They say they're allowed it there because it's bodywork.



Early 2010.

Is that the Eggbox one now that F1 have regained control of their license? I was looking forward to that, excitement followed by blazing disappointment when I come to realise that realistic simulation+me= many first lap exits.

It's multiformat, I believe. So yes, it means Eggbox F1 at last!

Has there ever been a good F1 game? Because making it arcadey makes it worthless, and making it realistic just goes to show why none of us will ever drive an F1 car.

I thought that the F1 cars in ToCA Race Driver 3 handled pretty well.

Geoff Crammond's F1GP is the obvious candidate, though. I loved that game.

Sony's F1 on PS3 was good I thought, as were most of the ISI ones on PC and for their time, Geoff's ones and the first 2 on PS1.

You got it

Oooh, this is good.

http://sundayafternoonclub.blogs.topgea ... lassic-f1/

Be warned, you'll want to waste a lot of time watching these - basically the beeb, in the run up to the Oz GP this weekend have been running a poll on viewers favourite year and not only have they done five minute highlight reels of the winning two they done the next four runner ups as well.

Damn those Brawn cars look ugly with the fluoro yellow wheel caps. The yellow was bad enough, but it really doesn't belong there.

Oh, now that was an excellent way to spend half an hour. I still have piles and piles of VHS tapes from when I used to record every race from about 1989-1994. I reckon I might spend the weekend watching some of that.

I wish F1 was still worth bothering with.

Check out the results of the first qualifying session:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 967177.stm

McLaren right down the bottom, and a mix of tons fo teams at the top.

This season could be absolutely wide open, which is awesome.

It might be exciting if it were allowed to run its course but I can't see the F1 bosses allowing the teams with all the hugest sponsors to languish at the back of the field for long.

Then the teams not languishing would BECOME the teams with the better sponsors. Williams are a surprise here but nearly won a championship 6 years ago. Ferrari went 3 years without a win not long ago and effectively didn't win as recently as 2005. McLaren haven't won a constructor's championship in 11 years etc.

That said, I don't consider free practice that much more of an indicator than testing and it's not beyond all but the Red Bull guys to have a similar diffuser sorted for the first European race.

Yeah I guess it's very early days and by all accounts McClaren have come a long way just to get to where they are now. Just been watching some of the practice which seems to be on repeat from the red button on BBC. Damn those cars are fugly but they all seem to be nice and oversteery.

Apropos of pretty much nothing:



I received that twenty-one years ago, and am still cheered up immensely. By it.

They'd have to form a team called McClaren for a start.

Not that I got it the same way but I've got 2 1990 Australia GP envelopes signed by the travelling Minardi team.

It's 14 people. Scary.

i agree with the other posters, still i think there should be room for an arcady one, i mean F1 on the amiga (the vroom sequel, still the best driving game name) was excellent

Of F1 games I've only been into F1GP on the Amiga. Very simple but quite rewarding to play.

Of all the F1 games I've played, only F1GP (amiga) and Grand Prix 2 (PC) have had any time devoted to them.

I used to do my own car textures. They were RUBBISH!

#top" class="postlink">OOOOOOOOH! Beeb making an effort there.

The "driver's lap" (I watched Australia) is very good.

DUM. d - d - dum - d - d - d - d - dum.

Yes, they're using The Chain

Yep, confirmed some time ago.