"when the drivers blipped the throttle, the car could be seen to squat down on its suspension as the downforce increased"
They all have their fans and their critics who think it’s a boring sport.
I don’t follow F1, but based on a bunch of people in my Twitter feed, they finished one of the most exciting seasons in years.
> Since 1937, the only year in which races were held but no fatalities occurred was 1982.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Isle_of_Man_TT_Mountai...
Turns out, it's fairly straightforward to build a car that rather radically exceeds the physical limits of the driver.
I would love to watch the autonomous version of that, though, with "no restrictions" (or nearly none - melting the nose of the car behind you with a flamethrower isn't quite in the spirit). You want to have a driver in a sim booth drive it over wireless? Great. You want to have a self driving algorithm? Great. You want to generate gobs of downforce with upward firing jets? Great. Just define some basic fan safety based limits, or... don't, and have a closed track.
I would love to see what some of the race teams could come up with, unrestricted from all the various "Hey, let's keep drivers and fans alive!" limits out there.
Also, formula one for years has cars leave a so highly turbulent wake that they had to introduce a system that gave cars close behind other cars some leeway as to their aerodynamics to make overtakes possible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_reduction_system)
I guess you’d need something similar, too.
DRS is still there though. The basic argument for it is that it makes races more exciting by encouraging overtakes even more (though there is a lot of debate about that).
I mean, things like X-games get a lot of viewers, why not the above?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_propulsion_engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiXuHjyxW14
It would need quite a lot of energy, so batteries are the limiting factor, as always.
The author proposed "Formula Zero," where teams would be national rather than purely sponsor-oriented. Team America (cue music) vs. Team Japan vs. Team Italy etc. Note that this was years before the zero-emissions effort of the same name. Cool idea, and one might imagine what could emerge from efforts where NASA helps with aerodynamics for Team America, DLR for Germany, etc. (and/or DOE's combustion engineering experts consulting on Team America engine design: the potential collaborations run long).
Fun fact: a major limiting factor for racing speed is the allowed size of the brakes. Let F-1 cars have titanic wheels with low profile tires and lap speeds would shoot way up. Of course, brake too little or too late and the resulting wreck will almost certainly be fatal — it's pretty tough to protect against coup-contrecoup injuries no matter how energy-absorbent the car may be when speeds get really high. Scrambled brains are good for breakfast, bad for drivers.
It's been tried in all sorts of endeavors and eventually falls apart.
Back in the day, there was a motorcycle series "Formula USA", with rules essentially "must have 2 wheels, no alcohol", and it was all well and good with folks running their hand crafted, bored out Superbikes until Kenny Roberts showed up with a pair of factory Yamaha Moto GP 500cc two stroke machines (which is, essentially, "unobtainium"), and, in time, dominated the field. Things like that lead to rule changes in F-USA.
Also, consider the origin of modern MMA. The "Ultimate Fighter Championship", which was a "no rules" bout. Royce Gracie dominated those events early on.
I will never forget UFC 4. Dan Severn, a very powerful wrestler, was dominating his bouts (3 as I recall). His fights were over very quickly.
Meanwhile, Royce, who was a skilled grappler, while winning his bouts, they were taking quite a bit of time.
At the end, Royce had just finished his 3rd bout and then had to stand up to Severn, with very minimal rest. Combining Severn's fast bouts, with Royce long bouts gave Severn a lot of time to rest and recover between fights. Royce was obviously quite tired going in to the final round.
Severn dominated that fight, but it drew on...and on...and on. Over 15 minutes.
In the end, Gracie prevailed, upside down, pinned against the fence, with Severn bent over him. It was an extraordinary encounter.
But in the end, it led to rule changes. 15m fights don't really work with the broadcast schedule. Seeing two guys tangled in knots for 10m straight with minimal movement isn't very interesting to watch, either. And now we have modern MMA with combined striker and grappling skills.
Turns out competition is only fun when it's fair. While its technically interesting to see folks exploit the rules, and even dominate, it's more interesting when they have to work within them.
In the end, you (most folks, I know I do) want the man behind the wheel to be the deciding factor, not the machine beneath him.
For the driver, keep safety requirements: "safety cell", driver+seatBallast minimum weight (G-force maximums?)
For the car:
- regulate tyre contact patch minimum-at-all-times. NB: not number, placement, manufacturer or compound
- regulate other safety stuff like brake light(s) and mirrors/mirror-equivalent-screens etc.
- physical size and minimum&maximum-at-all-times weight limit IE mass window.
- design wise go nuts. Do whatever you want.
Then, when they go too fast. Reduce the size or mass or both for the car. Make them do more, with less.
Eventually, you'd end up with gokarts doing current F1 speeds with ridiculous tech.
But the driver would be largely a passenger as perfect traction electronics take over and AI driving etc.
So then you make the passenger a lottery for those who attend the races... obviously minimum physical requirements.
The other thing that was really exceptional about the 2J, at least as simulated in GT4, was how tall the 3-speed automatic gearing was. Between the car seemingly never changing gears, barely varying RPMs despite accelerating like a rocket, and essentially not needing to brake for turns, it just seemed like the epitome of buggy arcade physics. Through a 2022 lens that description sounds apropos to an EV, despite it being a rather old ICE machine.