F1 and Ovals.

[trmiv]

Why not? Might be fun fun to see. As for the people saying it would be boring, it couldn't be any more boring than F1 has become anyway.

Also oval racing doesn't automatically = boring racing. I agree some Winston Cup races are too long, and there isn't much action, but short oval races ALWAYS have action. Every Saturday night across the country racers take to oval tracks and put on really exciting side-by-side racing. But, those are usually 30-lap features where you are letting it all hang out the entire time. There is no conserving fuel, or managing tires, or saving the car in a 30-lap feature. It's a 30-lap battle for the win, and some of the most entertaining racing going on today.

 

[CocaCola5]

Originally posted by: hardass
they allready do reach unmanagable speeds at the US Grand Prix, if they didnt run the road course, the possiblilty of cars flying in the stands would be very likley.

I know, this is why it will never be allowed, a wheel touch at say 280mph would launch the chassis into the stands.

 

[GTaudiophile]

NO!

F1 rox0rs as is!

 

[puffpio]

I think NASCAR oval racing is boring, IRL and CART ovals are somewhat more interesting tho, I think because the car looks cooler and the acceleration is just that much more powerful!

I would want to see it just to see what kind of top speeds the engineers can squeeze out of them. Can you imagine a sustained 18000 rpm roundy round? WOW

 

[FrustratedUser]

Do you think the speeds would be much different to the speeds that CART already has on the ovals?
The F1 cars are lighter but CART has slightly more horsepower (I think) or atleast the same.

 

[dawheat]

If F1 cars were optimized for an oval- the speeds would far exceed any speed attainable by CART/IRL cars. WIth equal if not more hp (BMWs V10 is estimated at 890hp), the big difference would be the aerodynamics.

Ferrari has a full scale windtunnel running 24/7/365 for every possible aerodynamic tweak- maximum downforce with minimum drag. I'd fully expect an optimized F1 car to be able to hit over 270-280+mph which would be terrifyingly fast- there is no way any vechicle could withstand an impact at those speeds. CART/IRL chassis are basically spec provided by Reynard/Lola which are limited in the amount they can be modified. And we all know exactly how well Reynard did at building a F1 chassis with BAR.

I'd fully expect 99% of the current F1 field to be extremely quick in a CART/IRL vehicle very quickly. However I'd doubt there are but a handful of CART/IRL drivers who could drive a F1 car competively and none who could be a frontrunner. While grooved tires have placed an unfortuate empahsis on aerodynamic grip, the result has been cars which are incredibly difficult to drive at 100%.

Monaco is a classic- though its impossible to pass at. I still remember 96' in the rain when Michael Schumacher blitzed the field, lapping the rest of the grid by lap 15 in the pouring rain- watching him slide his car through the hairpins with no visibility- simply stunning.

 

[trmiv]

F1 cars will never be on an oval because they are simply not designed for it. They reley on aero grip, which would cause way too much drag down the straights and slow the cars down. The aerodynamic grip is built into the designs of the chassis and body, so simply trimming an F1 car out to run on an oval would not get it.

 

[Ns1]

they should invent a new sport

"extreme nascar"

that'd be so awesome

 

[Nemesis77]

No. Driving around in a circle? Whoa, sounds like fun!

If that's your cup of tea, go watch NASCAR. Me? I'm a WRC type of guy myself .

 

[Nefrodite]

Originally posted by: dawheat
If F1 cars were optimized for an oval- the speeds would far exceed any speed attainable by CART/IRL cars. WIth equal if not more hp (BMWs V10 is estimated at 890hp), the big difference would be the aerodynamics.

Ferrari has a full scale windtunnel running 24/7/365 for every possible aerodynamic tweak- maximum downforce with minimum drag. I'd fully expect an optimized F1 car to be able to hit over 270-280+mph which would be terrifyingly fast- there is no way any vechicle could withstand an impact at those speeds. CART/IRL chassis are basically spec provided by Reynard/Lola which are limited in the amount they can be modified. And we all know exactly how well Reynard did at building a F1 chassis with BAR.

I'd fully expect 99% of the current F1 field to be extremely quick in a CART/IRL vehicle very quickly. However I'd doubt there are but a handful of CART/IRL drivers who could drive a F1 car competively and none who could be a frontrunner. While grooved tires have placed an unfortuate empahsis on aerodynamic grip, the result has been cars which are incredibly difficult to drive at 100%.

Monaco is a classic- though its impossible to pass at. I still remember 96' in the rain when Michael Schumacher blitzed the field, lapping the rest of the grid by lap 15 in the pouring rain- watching him slide his car through the hairpins with no visibility- simply stunning.

schumacher was on 60 minutes.. he said something about that kinda stuff being too dangerous i think. go back to the early days for indy cars where drivers didn't get to grow old

 

[LAUST]

LOL, some of you guys crack me up

but it's obvious who has raced motorsports in real life and who hasn't

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: dawheat
I'd fully expect 99% of the current F1 field to be extremely quick in a CART/IRL vehicle very quickly. However I'd doubt there are but a handful of CART/IRL drivers who could drive a F1 car competively and none who could be a frontrunner.

Yep. *cough*Michael Andretti*cough*

 

[puffpio]

Didn't Michael Andretti suck hardcore? (I didn't get into F1 until last year)

 

[SludgeFactory]

Monaco is a classic- though its impossible to pass at. I still remember 96' in the rain when Michael Schumacher blitzed the field, lapping the rest of the grid by lap 15 in the pouring rain- watching him slide his car through the hairpins with no visibility- simply stunning.

M Schumacher crashed on the first lap of the 96 Monaco GP, in the rain...

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: pio!pio!
Didn't Michael Andretti suck hardcore?

To put it mildly:

Suffice to say that Michael Andretti is perhaps the most submitted driver we receive here. Not surprising, considering his dismal efforts in the McLaren in 1993. Though we all knew he would find it hard to tough it out against Ayrton Senna, considering his Indy car reputation we would have expected more than his poor qualifying efforts and regular spins and accidents, especially in the opening laps.

If anything else, what should get Andretti in is his ridiculous attitude of living in the States and commuting to Europe for each race. Not only did this keep him away from his team, it meant that he was not immersed in a European environment and could never hope to succeed in F1 that way.

He is saved only by a few points scoring finishes, such as 5th in Spain, before a podium at Monza (in a fine drive from the back of the pack after an early pit stop) in his last F1 race before he bit the bullet and let in Mika Hakkinen, a man of infinitely more adaptability to F1.

Link

 

[CocaCola5]

Originally posted by: trmiv
F1 cars will never be on an oval because they are simply not designed for it. They reley on aero grip, which would cause way too much drag down the straights and slow the cars down. The aerodynamic grip is built into the designs of the chassis and body, so simply trimming an F1 car out to run on an oval would not get it.

On a oval they can run almost no wing so drag is not an issue. The downforce at 250mph+(even with no wing) is probably more than with 100% wing on a road course because of the way the car's underneath is built.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Didn't Michael Andretti suck hardcore? (I didn't get into F1 until last year)

Yes, he was terrible. In his defense, he came into a team (McLaren) that was clearly inferior to Williams, which completely dominated the year before in '92 with Nigel Mansell. Williams had a huge advantage in horsepower over McLaren, something like 75-100 hp. It didn't help that Andretti's teammate was Aryton Senna, who was easily the most talented driver of his era and outperformed Andretti by an extreme margin every race weekend. And even with Senna, it was all he could do to jump in front of the Williams at the start and hold them off for 5 or 6 laps at the beginning of the race, before eventually getting blown away on a straightaway. In the rain Senna was the best ever, and he won a few races that way. Andretti was never close.

If anything else, what should get Andretti in is his ridiculous attitude of living in the States and commuting to Europe for each race.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. After he got off to such a bad start, he started getting heavily criticized for the commuting. The season just went downhill from there.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactoryYes, he was terrible. In his defense, he came into a team (McLaren) that was clearly inferior to Williams, which completely dominated the year before in '92 with Nigel Mansell

While that may be true, the fact still remains that most of the problems Andretti faced were not because of the car, but because of his inability to adapt to F1. For example, he stalled his car few times in the start, and he regularly spinned his car (even more so when it was wet). He was suited for CART/Indy, he was terrible at F1.

it seems that it's more difficult for CART/indy-driver to move succesfully to F1, than it is for F1-driver to succesfully to move to CART/indy. Dunno what that is.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Oh definitely, he sucked hard. There's no way I can defend Andretti's performance, I just wanted to point out that he came into a situation with a team that had a reputation as a top team which led to very high expectations and criticism when he failed. That's still no excuse for all the stalls and spins. I think if he could have at least finished some races and gotten some laps under his belt, things would have settled down instead of snowballing like they did. He still would have been booted out of F1, but maybe he would have survived to the end of the year at least

 

[trmiv]

Part of Andretti's problem in F1 was lack of testing time. He was simply not allowed to test the car. Mika Hakkinen was under contract to do at least 50% of McLaren's testing that year, and the rest went to Senna, so Andretti got very little testing at all. Hell, Andretti didn't even move to Europe when he went to F1, he stayed in the US and flew to the races only when he needed to. Being a rookie an any series, especially one with the caliber of talent as F1 is really tough, and the lack of seat time in the car was a big problem. It's hard to adapt to a new car, new tracks, new surroundings, if your test time is limited to what you do on race weekends. I'm not an Andretti fan by any stretch of the imagination, but he was in a situation that was doomed to fail from the start.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactory
Oh definitely, he sucked hard. There's no way I can defend Andretti's performance, I just wanted to point out that he came into a situation with a team that had a reputation as a top team which led to very high expectations and criticism when he failed. That's still no excuse for all the stalls and spins. I think if he could have at least finished some races and gotten some laps under his belt, things would have settled down instead of snowballing like they did. He still would have been booted out of F1, but maybe he would have survived to the end of the year at least

Well, his last race was decent, he finished third. Had he been in the F1 for few years, he might have developed in to a decent F1-driver (in dry conditions at least), he could even win few races. But that was never an option for him. He had his chance and he failed.

 

[Nefrodite]

hey andretti was damn kewl in the IMAX Super Speedway - The Mach II Special Edition (IMAX) (DTS) (1998)

imax mounted on indy car.. wee