Nigel Roebuck ועתיד הפורמולה-1 או התקנות החדשות או הרצויות

[דובי מילר]

הפורמולה-1 נמצאת בפיסגת הפירמידה של הספורט המוטורי וככזו אמורה להיות סדרת המרוצים המהירה ביותר,

המלהיבה ביותר וזו שמספקת לקהל אוהדיה, קרי אנחנו, את ההצגה הטובה ביותר.

הפורמולה-1 אמורה לספק לנו קרבות בין נהגים על המסלול ולא קרבות בין מנהלי קבוצות, מכונאים ומתדלקים

שמכריעים את המרוצים ברחבת הטיפולים.

בשנים האחרונות הרגילו אותנו שעקיפה בספורט הזה היא לעשות עצירה מהירה יותר בפיטס ולצאת לפני היריב שלך

ולא צריך יותר מזה, חישוב נכון של דלק, מספר הקפות מהירות על מסלול ריק מהפרעות וצוות מיומן שיעשה את העבודה

הכי מהר שאפשר וכמעט מובטח לך לחצות את קו הסיום ראשון, בתנאי שאתה נוהג בפרארי או מקלארן-מרצדס.

בשנות ה-70 וה-80 ראינו מרוצים עם קרבות בין נהגים שהביאו גם עקיפות על המסלול ולא רק בפיטס אלא שכל

זה הופר כאשר נכנסו לתוקף התקנות האוירודינמיות השונות והמגבילות ובעיקר תקנות התדלוק החדשות שגרמו

לקבוצות לחשוב טקטיקה ולא נהיגת מרוצים טהורה.

בשנה הבאה יעשה צעד ראשון לקראת החזרת התחרותיות למרוצי הגראן-פרי כאשר בקרת המשיכה

תבוטל ואולי אם ירצה השם...או ברני, יחזירו לנו גם את צמיגי הסליקס ויקטינו את הכנפיים.

Nigel Roebuck נדרש הפעם בשאלה מהי בעצם מכונית הפורמולה-1 האידיאלית או מה יהיה התקנון

האידיאלי שיספק לנו אקשן ויחזיר את התחרותיות למסלול.

 

 

תהנו

דובי

[דובי מילר]

To be frank, I don't - yet - have any strong feelings about 'the FIA's vision of the future, with active wings and bodywork', because so many similar 'visions' have been mooted in the past, and then disappeared without trace.

 

Unless or until this kind of technology becomes set in stone, therefore, I'm not going to worry about it.

 

Should it eventually come to be, however, I may begin to worry about it a great deal. I can't take issue with the FIA's wish to make overtaking easier - God knows it has taken enough time for the governing body to get the message - but I can't for the life of me see why 'active' wings and the like need to come into the picture.

 

Why introduce yet another 'technology' into what is already an over-technological sport?

 

If you want to make overtaking easier - I don't mean 'easy' - there are plenty of things you can do, it seems to me. For one thing, you can get rid of at least some of those technologies which these days do so much to eliminate driver error.

 

Traction control, for a start. I know we are due to have a ban on traction control next season, and I'm totally in favour of that, but of late there have been murmurs that in the fullness of time it may be allowed back. No!

 

Next, you can hugely simplify the cars' aerodynamics - rid them of the barge boards and all the other appendages which are not only, as Bernie Ecclestone says, hideously ugly, but also greatly increase downforce, and thus make overtaking ever more difficult.

 

At the moment we have umpteen multi-million pound wind-tunnels operating around the clock, at God knows what cost, as a result of which aero 'bits' are manufactured constantly, improving a car's lap time by three-hundredths of a second here, seven-hundredths there - and what does that do for the sport's fans, without whom motor racing wouldn't exist? Zilch.

 

What else? Well, ban refuelling. It was introduced for no reason other than to permit order changes to take place - to divert attention from the fact that they were - and are - so rarely achieved on the track.

 

Can so-and-so get out of the pits before his rival nicks the lead? That's where all the 'excitement' lies these days, and it shouldn't be that way. Fine, if it's an extra element occasionally, but it shouldn't be the focal point of a Grand Prix.

 

And there's no doubt whatever that it has further diminished overtaking on the track. How many times have we heard a driver admit, "I was waiting for the stops ..."?

 

Then there's the 'one move' thing - the nonsensical suggestion that, so long as he does it only once, it's quite acceptable for a driver to swerve across the bows of another trying to pass him.

 

As I've recently written in a column, this is not only unnecessarily dangerous (in a sport otherwise preoccupied with safety), but also, by definition, reduces the overtaking we all so much want to see.

 

If 'more overtaking' is what the FIA want to see, it seems to me there are any number of avenues to be investigated, without the need to go to yet more (inevitably expensive) technologies, like 'active' wings and bodywork.

 

Almost 40 years ago, Ferrari experimented with something of this kind. In 1968, the year in which wings first appeared in F1, the team came up with a hydraulically-operated rear wing, which operated normally in a corner, but which then, so long as the driver kept his finger on a button on the steering-wheel, flattened out along a straight. Best of both worlds, on the face of it.

 

At Monza, Chris Amon was running second in the early part of the race, and all was well until the system operating the wing leaked hydraulic fluid on to his rear tyres.

 

This happened at the Lesmos (super-quick in those days), and Amon's Ferrari hit the guardrail, cleared it, and then flew into trees. By some miracle, Chris was unhurt, but Ferrari quietly forgot about the system thereafter, and settled for fixed wings.

 

And shortly after that, the FIA - in the interests of safety - declared that movable wings were henceforth banned.