THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

I literally cant be bothered. You arent a fan yet you have responded twice. Move on, nothing for you here.

Man City have a better 'car' than Crystal Palace, yet a fair few times over the last few years Palace have managed to overcome that and beat City.

The car helps, sure, but without a top class driver in the seat then you're not guaranteed to do anything.

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Cuboid of bum fluff

Then you have the argument of which car to use to define who is the best driver. A single-seater car with aerodynamics? A sports prototype? A touring car? A silhouette stock car like a NASCAR? A kart? Some drivers will be stronger in some cars than others. It is impossible to make a fair, even choice.

F1 has always been about the combination of car and driver, and has never pretended any differently.

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"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

I’m not much of an F1 follower, but isn’t the design of the car and engine a big part of the sport?

Absolutely fundamental but they all work within the same rule set and in theory have the same budget cap ( this is about as transparent as FFP with many 'expenses' allowed outside the cap including driver salaries. This includes some teams in effect running a B team which is an extremely grey area).

It has its own problems though. If you consider Redbull to be the benchmark currently, the car is almost exclusive set up and designed around their lead driver. Any number of second drivers have tried and failed to drive it as competitively due to very specific and for most non competitive traits.

If for whatever reason max isnt able to drive the car through say injury or illness, it would leave them quite exposed.

The engine isnt as much of an issue as it used to be in that they are all developing very similar power and very good reliability. How its mapped and run in the car is a key issue though. Haas run a Ferrari engine which failed a lot for them last year and led them to a last place finish with the other customer Ferrari team finishing well down the order also.

I’m not a fan but a genuine question: I know there is some form of electric F1 in place but when do you think that will take over from the petrol version and be the senior competition? Petrol F1 at some point will surely become an anachronism, reserved for the Goodwood revival etc. Has there been any discussion about how to flip them?

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

Actually there is an opposite direction with synthetic fuel being developed. Formula E of which you refer has its place but its a difficult watch for me, full of gimmicks and homologated. I love motor racing and watch most variants but find Formula E and Extreme E the least compelling.

The current F1 formula is 1.6 V6 engines with a complicated hybrid system that harvests energy from braking/axle (MGU-K) and from the heat generated at the turbo (MGU-H) so there is an amount of electrical energy aligned with the ICE. These regs will last until the end of the 2025 season when a new formula will be introduced but will still largely be ICE.

I see where you're coming from, but F1 has first and foremost always been an engineering sport. It's always been about who can design and create the best car, then you bring in some drivers to make the car compete with other teams. Over time (thanks to media and subsequently social media) the sport has become a lot more about the drivers and their personalities/careers. However, to this day, winning the constructers is far more glamourous and lucrative to a team than having one of their driver's win a WC.

Remember, in 2021 Mercedes were the best team that year, and rightfully celebrated their constructors win massively despite the reality that Lewis was cheated out of his 8th driver's WC.

Also, the better teams will attract and be able to recruit the better drivers. A good mate of mine works for McLaren F1 and over beer reluctantly admitted that he thinks that Max is the most talented and best driver of all time, and when you look at what he can pull out of the bag in moments such as sector 3 in his astonishing Monaco pole from 2023 I can see why he thinks that. Though I'm not quite sold on my mate's opinion (yet), I don't think there's many drivers in history that can be two tenths down going into a final sector at Monaco and ultimately take pole.

This is what I love about F1, the GOAT conversation is so difficult because it's almost impossible to compare eras. So you end up having a range of people make cases for (usually) their favourite driver. I've had so many of these conversations with my Dad, who will die on his hill saying no one is close to Senna.

Thanks.

Synthetic fuel sounds interesting but isn't part of the importance of F1 the fact it's a test bed for future road car technology? Maybe not anymore but I seem to recall that used to be talked about. If it is still seen as a way of developing the mass market tech (if!), and the mass market doesn't go down the synthetic fuel route, surely major F1 manufacturers will lose interest?

Sorry for the long winded questions - the future of the car post-petrol interests me. I'm not entirely convinced by the current (no pun intended) electric solutions but, as that seems to be where all the big money (and legislation) is going, it's interesting to know about other future options.

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

Thanks for that. As someone ultimately uninterested in F1 I truly did think it was all about the drivers and sort of shared Donmentor's opinion. I'd even suggested a better championship would be 8 - 10 races to decide the winning manufacturer, then get them to build 5 or 6 cars for a 4 race drive-off between the top drivers. But knowing it's actually all about the breeding of the horses and not the jockeys (to use an analogy) shifts that paradigm for me.

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.